WHY BILLIONAIRES ARE BILLIONAIRES - WHAT MAKES GREAT COMPANIES WIN
I’m as far from being a billionaire as the sun is far from the Earth, but the principles, mental models, the decision-making process of Billionaires are available now more than ever in Books, on the internet, in podcasts, so I’ve decided to build a short training covering some of the important principles and truths that Billionaires value, from the information that I’ve consumed in the past year.
I believe that In order to achieve something Great, Build something that will last more than half a century to serve and improve billions of lives takes more than just the tactics, the FB ads, the copywriting, the engineering skills, the sales skills, or any other skillset that you can think of.
It requires you to understand the fundamentals and to spend more time re-learning the foundations more than the new and shiny tactics coming up every other day.
In this short training, I’d like to cover some of the fundamentals 😉
TIME IS THEIR ALLY
Let me ask you a few questions: Do you feel like you’re in a rush to achieve a specific goal?
Do you feel bad when you don’t achieve your goal when you don’t achieve them in that specific time frame that you had set for yourself?
Do you work 12 hours days and still feel like there isn’t enough time in a day to accomplish everything?
Do you feel like time is running out?
If that’s you then, I think you’ll need to pay attention to what I’m about to cover in this first point.
Billionaires or really anyone who has achieved unfathomable success in any area of their life understands one thing about time and that is THAT TIME IS THEIR ALLY!
Time is the only resource, the only asset that no one can you or them, out of!
They have the belief that any goal is achievable, no matter how big in the RIGHT TIME FRAME.
They understand that if they do the right thing today, repeat the same Good actions tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow, etc, Time will become their ALLY and take them to their ultimate destination.
It is time for you to stop viewing time as a clock that you’re running against but more Like a Tool, an Asset, a Partner of yours which is here to take you to your end Goal/ Ultimate destination
AVOID LOSING LONG ENOUGH AND YOU WIN BY DEFAULT
As entrepreneurs, we’ve come to believe that in order to really win big, you have to take the biggest risks, you’ve probably heard “HIGH-RISK HIGH REWARD” a million times and it’s probably something that you use to make you feel better about making dumb risky decisions.
Well, let me tell you this...Anything times zero equals 0.
If you spend a whole quarter of a century building the largest company there is, but you end up making one bad decision, your whole business could go back to 0.
Warren and Charlie are willing to spend multiple years without making a deal because they understand the importance of downside risk mitigation, they’re ready to give up huge returns to not risk losing money.
Broke people on the other hand are ready to spend 3-5$, a thousand times hoping to win the lottery. They haven’t noticed that you have more probabilities of becoming a billionaire than it is to win the lottery.
I’m not saying that you need to play it safe and never take risks in your life, but I’m suggesting that you take calculated risks, pick the business in which you have more probability to win/ the most certainty in, don’t try to jump in new businesses that you have 0 knowledge about just because you see someone online driving a Lambo.
Today I could pretty much start any business that I want with the marketing/advertising, sales, prospecting skills that I’ve gathered in the past few years, but guess what...I still pick to sell to the market that I have the most access to and that I understand the most.
The most common reason why the largest companies go out of business is not because they stop innovating or become complacent, It’s actually but because they become overconfident and think that they can just jump in any market and start selling their products/services.
So they spend a few hundred million $$$ in this new venture, a few billion $$$ in this other venture and they forget to focus on what made them great, and Like I said one bad decision and you’re out of the game.
LONG-TERM THINKING - SLOW AND STEADY WINS.
This is probably the most important thing to understand but also the hardest to accept.
We’re in a time where if you’re not successful today, if you didn’t make a sale today, if you haven’t figured out what you want to do with your life by now, then you’re considered as unsuccessful OR it leads you to start feeling a certain pressure to have it all figured out ASAP.
Well let me tell you a little secret, if you make a commitment to never missing in your business (or in life) for the next 10 years, 20 years, 40 years, means that you have to start making decisions today that will make it UNREASONABLE for you to not win every single cycle that is ahead of you.
The people that are solely focused on making this week, this month, this year their best revenue week or month or year, always get beat by the people who have an extended time horizon, because the decision-making process for both people is completely different:
- Someone who wants to maximize their results today, this week, this month, this year is ready to put everything on the line to make it happen and that has a certain cost down the road because if you make decision to better today, you’re doing it at the cost of a better tomorrow, so they end up having certain losses 5 years, 10 years, 15 years from now!
- Someone who has made the decision to be profitable every year for the next 40 years, acts totally in a different way, this person/company has to be constantly investing for down the road to make sure that they don’t miss somewhere down the road ;)
The commitment to the consecutive performance year after year for the next 20 years - 50 years forces you to innovate ahead of disruptions!
A clear example of this is Jeff Bezos when he was growing Amazon, he turned every line of expenses of his business into a source of revenue for the business…
He decided to reinvest all the profits of the business to start the exact same services/ products that he needed to run his business and turned them all into a source of revenue as he could sell it back to other businesses needing the same services/products!
What he did in my own business would look something like this: I use Calendly to book meetings..what If I built a scheduling system and sell it to business owners just like myself?
If you really want to become a beast, a disruptive business in your niche, it’s time to stop focusing on today and start thinking and making decisions that will have the best outcomes for your business decades from now!
It’s not easy to do, because we’re all built to want instant gratification but if you really want to be GREAT, delay the gratification of your wins.