Of course, you feel a sense of achievement when you are a winner in the business game. Michał Sołowow, the wealthiest person in Poland, likens it to the Olympics, where you get the gold medal as a symbol of your victory. But it’s not the gold in the medal that you crave:
In business, things are as in every sports discipline: the runner at the Olympics runs for a medal. That medal will hang only on his own chest. From this medal he will have lucrative advertising contracts and appearance fees for participation in meetings later on. But when he stands on a podium and they play him the national anthem of his country, then he is moved, happy that he did something for people, that he fulfilled those people’s craving for emotion and pride.
Money is not the primary factor in business.
Naveen Jain, the American space entrepreneur, told me: “Making money is a by-product of doing things.”
Mohed Altrad, the World Entrepreneur of the Year 2015, cautions not to equate success with money:
Don’t consider money as an objective, but as a sign of success. It’s one of the signs of success. The success of the organization is to be sustainable, in which people are happy, in which humanity finds its foundation. That’s the success. Tell me, what’s the difference if you have 1 billion Euros in your pocket or 2 billion Euros? It doesn’t really make a difference.
Don’t consider money as an objective, but as a sign of success. It’s one of the signs of success.
— Mohed Altrad #BillionDollarGoldNuggets
If Your Only Objective Is Money or Personal Luxury, You Will Fail
Mohed made it quite clear with this story he told me when I visited him:
I met a lot of people who started business more or less at the same time as me. Their objective was to create an organization they could sell at a high price at a given moment. Some of them failed immediately. Some of them reached some level of success, and somebody offered them, say, 1 million Euros for their business. They said, “That’s not enough. I’ll carry on. I want to grow it further.” And then maybe a few years after, they were offered 100 million Euros. They said, “Not enough. I want 1 billion Euros.” Then they worked hard to reach 1 billion Euros. Unfortunately, they failed. They went bankrupt. They got zero.
That’s to say, if your company’s only objective is money, this is a failure.
Making money is a by-product of doing things.
— Naveen Jain #BillionDollarGoldNuggets
Motivation is the main difference between the billionaires and the millionaires. If you do it for money, to live in luxury, you will lose your motivation as soon as you have reached that level, and you stay a millionaire or even lose it all, when your business suffers. But if you are motivated by competition, by winning, when the business game itself excites you, then you will keep on growing your company, and only then do you have a chance to reach billions.
If your company’s only objective is money, this is a failure.
— Mohed Altrad #BillionDollarGoldNuggets
I asked Petter Stordalen, called the Hotel King in Scandinavia, about wealth-building advice. His answer:
Billionaires don’t do it for the money. It’s not the money that drives them, but the fun of the game.
It is about never settling, never getting comfortable, never longing for retirement. If you just try to get rich, you’ll never get there. If you find and do what you love, you might stand a chance. If you are prepared to work very hard for it.
Do you think money can be a motivation? The game, the competition. That’s the thing. And that’s why I say, if you start with a calculator in your hand, you will go nowhere. I think a lot of people will have the same motivation like I have. Some do it in academia. Not much money. In science, not much money. But they still have the same thing. They get the Nobel Peace Prize in Stockholm or Nobel Prize in Stockholm in medicine or in physics or in chemistry.
If you do it for money, to live in luxury, you will lose your motivation as soon as you have reached that level, and you stay a millionaire or even lose it all, when your business suffers.
— Rafael Badziag @BillionairePal #BillionDollarGoldNuggets
Peter Hargreaves built Hargreaves Lansdown, the go-to financial services company in the United Kingdom with over $120 billion under management. Considering the industry he is in, Peter gave me surprising reasons for his success:
I think there are two reasons for my success. One is I love it, and the other one is I never did it for what money brought me, even though money keeps the score; I did it purely for the success.
I know another guy who’s worked in this industry, and he always thought he was more successful than me, and of course, the last few years have proved otherwise, but he did it for the money, whereas I did it because I enjoyed it, and that was the most important thing. I loved every minute of it. I’d go back and do it again.
Billionaires don’t do it for the money. It’s not the money that drives them, but the fun of the game.
— Petter Stordalen #BillionDollarGoldNuggets
No amount of money will make it for you. This is something that Naveen Jain realized in America. He suffered poverty in India and also in the first year in the United States, which he spent in New Jersey. Craving money, he moved to California, where an Indian friend of his had just sold his business for $100,000.
And I said, God, what if I ever had $100,000 just like him? I would never have to work for a living in my life. My dreams would be true. Everything I ever wanted in my life. I would have made it. I would have just arrived.
Time went by and I left Silicon Valley and joined Microsoft, very early when Microsoft was a tiny company, had just gone public. And right after I joined, they came out with Windows 3.0, and the stock just exploded. Within six months, my stock options are now worth over $100,000.
Now, I should be happy. It suddenly occurred to me I forgot I have to pay tax. So $100,000 really doesn’t mean anything unless you have $100,000 after tax. A month goes by, and now I have $150,000. After tax, I have $100,000.
My mind said, what I really meant was not having $100,000, you have to have a house. We really need to be able to have a house and $100,000. That’s what really was going to make me happy.
Great. So we now have enough money to be able to buy a small house and $100,000. And it occurred to me, the house has to be comfortable enough for us to have a big family. After all, you can’t just have a small house. So it has to be a decent-sized house and $100,000.
So now, you have money to have a decent house and $100,000. My mind said, times have really changed, and $100,000 really can’t buy you anything. You have to have at least a million dollars if you’re going to be comfortable living.
Guess what happens? You have a million dollars now. Point of the story was there was never a time you got tired and said my God, I just have enough money. It didn’t matter how much you had, there would always be the next goal that you wanted. So point was that happiness didn’t come to a guy who came from India. At the beginning, all he wanted was $100,000. And it didn’t matter. It was never enough until your mind changed. And that to me is the story of how life changes.
If you just try to get rich, you’ll never get there.
— Petter Stordalen #BillionDollarGoldNuggets
Ten Billionaire Motivations
Don’t do it for the money. Billionaires have different motivations that allowed them to get that far. They like to create. It makes them get up in the morning. They love building businesses, improving them, optimizing their business models or processes, and most of all they love to see them grow.
If you start with a calculator in your hand, you will go nowhere.
— Petter Stordalen #BillionDollarGoldNuggets
1. Getting Out of Poverty
For many self-made billionaires, their first motivation was just to get out of poverty. Naveen Jain was born in rural India. I asked him who he wanted to become in his youth. “Oh God, I just wanted to get out of the poverty and do something useful
in my life.” He remembers vividly:
My mother was completely illiterate. And my only memory that I have is of my mother making sure that I got an education and her sitting down and asking me to solve a problem without me realizing she can’t read.
And mom would say, “Give me your homework. Point to me and tell me the answer to this problem.” And I would diligently write down and say, “Mom, the answer is this.” And my mom would be stern and say, “Don’t make me do it again.” And I would do it again, and then mom would say, “Now, go to the next one.”
And it was just her serious love wanting to make sure that we got out of the cycle of poverty. And she knew the only way you would do it would be through education.
I never did it for what money brought me, even though money keeps the score; I did it purely for the success.
— Peter Hargreaves #BillionDollarGoldNuggets
Lirio Parisotto, who was born on a Brazilian farm with no running water, didn’t have a specific dream at the beginning; he just wanted to leave the farm, to get out of poverty. “The service in the farm was hard. Plowing was the most difficult. We did it with the bull, not the tractor. I hated that because it was hard and hot. For most of the services at the farm, it’s easy when you got mechanical support. But we didn’t have electricity, we didn’t have a tractor, nothing. And in fact, I didn’t know what I wanted. But one thing I didn’t want was to stay there. So basically, my drive was to change my life.”
No amount of money will make it for you.
— Naveen Jain #BillionDollarGoldNuggets
2. Freedom
Freedom is another major billionaire motivation. Some of my interviewees recognized early in their lives that escaping poverty would make them free. Frank Stronach grew up in postwar Austria and experienced hunger in his youth. He confessed to me:
I just wanted to work so I won’t be hungry. And I wanted to work to be free, so I don’t have to crawl and say “yes sir.” My motivation was never to be hungry anymore. Be a free man.
This notion changed later to economic freedom:
If you’re not economically free, you’re not a free person. I wanted to be a free person. So I can say anything I want to say and can do the things I want to do.
And then to making other people free by saving them from poverty:
In the beginning, it was a question of not being hungry anymore. I’m also fighting for others, because I don’t want to see anybody being hungry.
Freedom has a lot to do with having control over your life. That’s also the case with Jack Cowin:
My main drive from the beginning was to have something that I could have some influence and control over and be a free person to do what I wanted.
3. Survival
But before you can become free, you and your business first need to survive:
When you start a business, the number one factor is survival. Will I survive? That is the number one drive. Survival. Not everybody admits it, but fear of failure, for most entrepreneurs I know, is a real-life factor.
So from the beginning, all you wanted to do is survive with the hope that this may turn into something that you’re proud of having been part of, that people don’t hate you for having ruined their lives because the thing went broke.
Of course, as your business grows, your motivations also develop.
4. Solving Problems
Billionaires focus on solving problems, not on making money. “If you want to be really successful in business, first find a problem to solve,” advises Dilip Shanghvi. “If you can solve a problem that is currently unsolved, you can create an interesting business opportunity. Don’t start a business to make money as an objective, money is just an outcome.”
Michał Sołowow has a similar perspective: “I am motivated by problems. Every day I want things to work better. Those problems that I encounter in everyday life lead me to solving them. In other words, it’s a self-propelling mechanism. I don’t find motivation in being a billionaire or becoming a billionaire. It really doesn’t turn me on.”
5. Doing Things Well and Improving
What turns him on is to do things well: “I think that I am driven by a desire to do things well, not perfectly, but well. I say this consciously. If things are carried out well and they are better and better, then I definitely draw satisfaction from that. If I understand something and it happens as I have expected and I have certain effects—well, also those measurable in money after all—then that certainly gives me a lot of fun.”
Petter Stordalen wants “to do things better today than yesterday, but not as good as tomorrow.”
Tony Tan Caktiong’s motivation is high quality as well: “I am happy when in business we achieve really good products. We have really good food and we really enjoy that.” That’s how the World Entrepreneur of the Year 2004 thinks.
I am driven by a desire to do things well, not perfectly, but well.
— Michał Sołowow #BillionDollarGoldNuggets
6. Doing Something New
For many billionaires, the venture itself is their motivation. Trying new things, breaking new ground, acquiring new knowledge. That’s what drives them.
For Dilip Shanghvi, opportunity is the greatest source of motivation.
Petter Stordalen describes it as follows: “It’s the willingness to leave behind, to seek new ventures, to take a leap, to take a step out, but you don’t know how deep, how long. Just to go. Also to see opportunities where others don’t see them.”
For Manny Stul, the Australian toy maker and the World Entrepreneur of the Year 2016, the motivation is “breaking new ground, doing stuff that’s different, acquiring new knowledge. Not standing still, that’s the important thing. I find the new directions we’re going to as a company and the new avenues we’re going into extremely exciting. It’s new and it’s different. If we kept doing the same thing over and over, I’d be bored.”
Tim Draper expresses it in clear words: “The world is discoverable. We should all discover it.”
Don’t start a business to make money as an objective, money is just an outcome.
— Dilip Shanghvi #BillionDollarGoldNuggets
7. Playing the Game of Business
A common denominator for all the billionaires is that they are passionate about business itself. They consider it to be great fun. If there is something like a natural-born businessman, it is Peter Hargreaves: “I love it. Do you know, I have no other great passion outside this business. I do a bit of fishing, I do a bit of golf—I’m crap at golf. I keep fit, I go to the gym. I love travel. But I’m passionate about the business. Completely passionate about it. It’s my life’s work. Of course, you’re more passionate because it’s so damn successful.”
8. Competition and Winning
And here we come to the next billionaire motivation: winning. In order to win, you need to become the best, and for that you need to compete.
Peter Hargreaves remembers how he set up the goal for the company he created with Stephen Lansdown: “I just knew I wanted to be the biggest. And Stephen always said he wanted to be the best, and of course, you can’t be the biggest unless you are the best. Did I envisage this success? Well, yes. The only thing I could not have envisaged was the size of the numbers. I could not have envisioned this business could be worth 7 billion pounds. I could not have imagined that we would hold 40-odd billion pounds of the clients’ money (meanwhile it’s over $120 billion). I couldn’t have envisaged that my personal wealth would be this big, but I did envisage that we could be the biggest retailer in investments in the United Kingdom. I just didn’t realize how big the numbers would be to be in that situation.”
For Sergey Galitskiy, the first motivation was survival because he needed to feed his family. But then it changed to competition and winning: “My first meeting with my competition was a game changer. I didn’t see any intellectual superiority on their part, and those were the strongest of competitors. And when you feel somebody’s intellectual superiority, it
wears you down, it pushes you down, and then you have to position yourself differently. But when you don’t feel it, then you start realizing that you can become number one. And when you consider the scale size of this country, it inspires you. And the feeling and understanding that intellectually they were not stronger, it became an obsession for me.”
The main motivation for Manny Stul is to succeed, to win. Ron Sim is motivated by achievements, Cho Tak Wong by success: “Everything I plan becomes a success.”
9. Building and Creating
Billionaires are creators, they take pleasure in making their visions become reality, they play with their power to bring things to life.
Tony Tan Caktiong is clear about his motivation: “I just want to do things. I just want to build bigger things, bigger dreams.”
Frank Hasenfratz is a creator as well: “I’ve got all the money in the world, but I’m at work every day.” For him, it is about building a sustainable business: “Why do you want business? Is it money? Because money, of course, is a motivator. But to me, to build something that lasts is most gratifying. You know, we are over 50 years old, and we have second and third generation working here. It is really satisfying.”
For others, like Chip Wilson, it’s about leaving a dent in the world: “You get to where anything material in life that I want, I can have. So then I think the dream is to be able to leave the world with a mark on it that lasts for generations. I think of some of the major parks in the world, and cities, that people can enjoy for ever and ever. Something like that.”
10. Social Impact
Another thing that Chip is excited about is social impact: “Money doesn’t necessarily get me up in the morning. What gets me up in the morning is changing people’s lives and focusing in first on people, their development. And because I’m very selfish, I want to be with people that I like to be with every day, and I find if the people I’m with are incredible, then my life is fun and it’s incredible, and then great businesses occur out of that.”
“You have an opportunity to make an impact, and you have about 80 years to do it. GO!” This is Tim Draper’s life philosophy in a nutshell. That’s why he is committed to spread entrepreneurship and venture capital around the world.
The Billion Dollar Secret Page 8