In sports, you can achieve results only if you are disciplined to train consistently. Similarly in business, you can achieve results only if you are disciplined to apply yourself consistently to what needs to be done. You have to show up day in, day out for decades to make it happen.
But billionaires are by no means superhumans or perfect working automatons. They also sometimes feel lazy just like you and me. The only difference is: they are aware of this fact and they don’t let themselves slack. They take up the struggle to overcome their weaknesses. This is what Michał Sołowow confessed to me:
I wake up every morning and do things I don’t like. I force myself to do them every day. Because I am not hardworking, I force myself to do hard work. I am not systematic, so I have to force myself to become systematic.
I like playing football but don’t feel like doing physical exercises. But to keep playing, I force myself to do exercises every day, do push-ups, curl-ups, I swim in a pool. It takes me 40 minutes in the morning, and often another 40 minutes in the evening. I don’t like that in principle. But I do it, simply. Generally after doing some exercises I feel better, but I don’t like the exercising phase itself. If I could achieve the same effect without doing those exercises, I wouldn’t do them. Well, but I do them.
Every day I have to persuade those “lazy bones” that are in me, and they keep telling me: “Today I think I woke up late,” or “I am in a hurry, no time,” or “I don’t feel well enough.” But then I respond to myself: “No way, don’t cheat yourself, bud, you simply feel lazy …” and I do it. In this way I learned about consequence and determination.
What are your habits, dear reader? Have you chosen them consciously? Do they support and enforce your long-term goals? Do you have established routines in your life and business? Do you employ all of the Six Habits of Wealth? It’s high time that you do it!
- Drifters don’t consciously develop their habits.
- Millionaires choose their habits consciously but don’t cover the entire Six Habits of Wealth on a consistent basis.
- Billionaires diligently follow all habits of the Six Habits of Wealth and don’t compromise them under any circumstance.
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CHAPTER 8
Sharpen Your Vision
MEN WANTED for hazardous journey, small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful, honour and recognition IN CASE OF SUCCESS
—Ernest Shackleton, the greatest adventurer of all time, whose men were trapped in the ice of Antarctica for 18 months and survived
Billionaires name having a great vision as one of the keys to success in business. For Cho Tak Wong, the World Entrepreneur of the Year 2009, the way to success has three words: belief, vision, and execution. Many billionaires, like Chip Wilson, consider being visionary one of their strength that determined their extraordinary achievements in business.
Set a Vision and Mission
You need to first know yourself before you set your vision.
Sergey Galitskiy wanted to play soccer professionally when he was still a kid. But he didn’t have any talent for it. When he realized this, he set a different vision for himself.
Mohed Altrad says, “My strong point is to have a vision of what I am now, and then projecting this in the future. And for others also.”
Your vision should inspire you and others. If it inspires you, it will then drive you throughout your career and help you endure through difficulties and setbacks. If it inspires others, it will help you win them for your causes and remove obstacles in your way.
Every billionaire started with an inspiring vision. For some, like Frank Stronach, it was at first self-centered. He just wanted to be free, also economically free.
Naveen Jain has a crazy vision to go to the moon and by this inspires others for their own moon shots. “I think that it is honestly about coming from that humble background, and to me going to the moon is not just about going to the moon. It is about creating that inspiration to other people in India and around the world to know that it doesn’t matter what background you come from. If I can dream and go land on the moon, what would you dream? You are better off than I was. And if I can do that, what would you do? And really inspire everyone to be at their best to find their moon shot. And knowing that each one of us would do something different, it doesn’t have to be going to the moon, but they will have their own moon shot.”
Right now he is planning a robotic mission to the moon, but there will be a manned mission in the next 20 years as well. “To me, ultimately my goal would be to change the definition of honeymoon to take your honey to the moon. Because it’s not called honey Hawaii, so why would you take your honey to Hawaii on honeymoon?”
From all the billionaires I interviewed, probably Petter Stordalen uses vision as a tool in his business most frequently and in the most spectacular way. His business is hotels, and he starts every hotel project with creating and communicating an inspiring vision. Thanks to his magical vision, Petter was able to win the contract for a huge hotel project in Stockholm against many contenders and despite low odds.
They gave me 10% chance of succeeding. I said, “That’s not bad. How many are invited to the competition?” They invited 30 or 40 hotel companies, and if they gave me a 10% chance, it’s pretty good. Is there anybody who has a 20% chance? No? So I said, “10% means we are 80% ahead of the others.” They said, “Why?” “Because most of them had a 2%, 3% chance of succeeding. We have 10%. So we are ahead of the pack already.” They said, “Okay, the presentations need to be like that.” I told my people, “Forget everything they write. Do what you think is best. Make freaking magic.” We went there; we had redrawn everything. Moved one hotel, new hotel there, sky bar, swimming pool, spa, everything.
During the presentation, they were like, “This is something brand new.” I said, “If you want to do something that makes people go from New York, from Japan, to see what we have done, do this.” They were like, “What?” We had the three best people in the company, and I was supposed to say nothing. But they asked me, “Petter, what are your thoughts around this?” They had told everything about the product, so I told these few people from this huge pension company, “I am not here for the money. I am here with my heart. This is the project which will define hotels in the future. Doesn’t matter how much it costs us; we will make magic.” I had five minutes. With very strong words, I wanted to show them that this is not an ordinary project for us. This is something brand unique.
I had done that 50 times before.
So when we went out from this meeting, one of the guys in the group said, “Petter, did you mean everything you said?” I said, “Yes, everything.” “That was strong.” I said, “Yes, that was strong.” “But when you say you don’t care about the money … you do.” I said, “Yes, but I wanted those people to understand I’m not here to start with a calculator in my hand. First we’ll make magic, and then we see how much do we need to invest. Maybe we need to do some changes, but we don’t start with a calculator. We start with passion, enthusiasm, a huge ambition to do something really f--king magic.
If you are sitting there and one guy is telling you “I’ll make magic. I’ll do something different,” you will be proud.
Of course, Petter won the competition and as promised, created magic.
Vision and Mission That Matter
Stand for something important. Set a vision and mission that matter. Focus on creating massive value for people and on improving the world around you, on improving people’s lives.
For Chip Wilson, a vision is something that is bigger than one’s self and is never achieved; it’s always there. “My vision has always been to elevate the world from a place of mediocrity to greatness.”
Michał Sołowow, now the wealthiest person in Poland, gave his first public company a proud name, which was also its program: Polish Life Impr
ovement (PLI). “I believed then, and still believe today, that what we do is we raise the quality and standard of living around, no matter the financial outcomes. The truth is we are improving the reality around us, be it by building new flats, office buildings, shopping centers, or by manufacturing something. We improve the life quality for all. And this in some way spreads not only onto the area that we directly affect, but indeed on the whole society.”
Hüsnü Özyegin benefited so much from a good education that he is committed to providing those less fortunate with the same opportunity. Next to numerous other philanthropic projects, he created a university in Istanbul. His vision in relation to that is “to make it one of the best research and teaching universities in Turkey, where students, with their professors, invent things that add value to Turkish exports. This is what my goal is from now on. It’s not an easy thing to do. I am always thinking of what more I can accomplish, but these days I dream about the university and its graduates and how they will go out into the world and be successful. I imagine our young faculty doing innovative research that will have an impact on our lives. I imagine our graduates becoming entrepreneurs and adding value to our economy.”
But his life vision is even greater. “If I can have an impact on another 1 million Turkish people in the next 10 years, I will be happy.”
Petter Stordalen’s overall business vision also has an environmental and social dimension. “My business goal, which I’m working on every day, and I am not there still and I will not be there in years, is to have a true triple-bottom-line company. That means that you have one area for profit, you have one area for sustainability, and you have one area for social responsibility, and all are equally important, and you release figures and targets on every one of these. We do this today, but we have a long way to go to be a true triple-bottom-line company.”
Frank Stronach created a notion of Fair Enterprise and implemented it in his company Magna. It is a system that gives all contributors to value creation, be they managers, investors, or employees, a fair share in the success of the company, also financially. The long-term vision of Fair Enterprise is to eliminate poverty.
What is the primary reason why people get up in the morning? They want to make a better life for themselves and their family.
There’s a lot of poverty in the world. I think the two most important things in life are freedom, freedom to be, to live and also let other people live, right? Freedom has very little meaning to a young person or to a kid in inner-city Detroit. There you can be free to be hungry and free. So freedom is the most important thing. But it means also economic freedom. If you’re not economically free, you’re not a free person. There’s very, very few people who are economically free, and that’s wrong.
Have you heard of the Golden Rule? Who has the gold makes the rules. The world has always been dominated by the Golden Rule. It still is. I don’t want to be dominated by somebody. If I feel that strong, I should not be able to dominate somebody either. So the key question is, how can we dismantle the chains of domination? Not by a violent revolution, but by the revolution of the mind. It’s a moral question, right? So the philosophy of Fair Enterprise is driven by the belief that employees have a moral right to some of the profits they helped to generate.
Tony Tan Caktiong is the World Entrepreneur of the Year 2004. His mission is more down to earth, more tangible, but no less important in everybody’s life. “I noticed that in many restaurants, fast food is not really that good. It’s really hard to find good fast-food restaurants.” His mission in business is “to provide a lot of restaurants that serve very good food, where people can really enjoy [the food].”
Cai Dongqing wants to contribute his best to make a better world, to make people a little bit happier. He does it through his enterprises in the entertainment sector. “We have seen an improving living standard of Chinese people over the past several decades. Along with it, people are longing for more mental satisfaction. I wish to bring more happiness to their lives by offering entertaining products such as comics, animation, movies, games, or via other newly emerging forms. This is what I would love to do. Maybe it is my mission.”
Kim Beom-Su is pushing the limits of technology. He has invented several business models and introduced new paradigms in the Internet and mobile world. He is literally building the future of the world. He wants to be remembered as somebody who “searched for the future and built the future, as a challenger, with a pioneer feel to it.” Success for him is “making the world a better place than when I was born and making at least one person happy.”
Tim Draper’s mission is “to spread entrepreneurship and venture capital around the world.” He wants to be remembered as someone who helped the world accelerate progress.
Mohed Altrad wants to improve the lives of the people he touches. He wants to spread the attitude of kindness across the world.
I’m not interested in having a lot of money in my pocket. Not really. Yes, I can have a few million, but not billions, because I don’t really need it.
He wrote a thick charter with a Code of Values for his company and hopes these values will survive him as part of the company and will serve future generations in perpetuity.
And the idea is to save the world. I know that what I am telling you is a drop of water in the humanity. But I’m trying to do something. Well, actually, I’m not trying. I’ve discovered that’s what I’ve been doing these last 30 years. Because this company grew, I had the opportunity to sell it maybe 13 times, and then have a lot of money in my pocket. But it has never been my ambition.
The central values that he wants to promote are faith and hope.
Faith is the basis you and I and others should act on. Hope is something that transports you to the future. And then just create that and ensure that it carries on and it adapts itself to the size of the group. You hope also that others will be inspired by this thing. If it’s the case, 23,000 families will be affected directly by our charter. With maybe four people per family, that’s 100,000 people. They have faith and they have hope and they’re happy.
Communicate Your Vision and Values Effectively
Having a vision is one thing; being able to convey it is another. In order for your vision to affect other people, you need to learn to communicate it effectively. You need to be able to convey your values to your followers.
For that, communication skill as described in chapter 6 is essential. But there is much more to that.
First you need to be clear on what your vision is, what you want to achieve. If you don’t know what you want, how can you get there?
For Ron Sim, clarity is one of the reasons for his success. “What decided my success? I always say that success is a function of two things: what you believe and what you do. I think I always believed in myself, and I have clarity about what I want to do most of the time when I decide on something.”
Then you need to make sure you will be understood. You need to clarify your message. Simplicity is king.
This is something, Dilip Shanghvi considers his advantage. “A core strength is the ability to simplify complex issues. I think I always had this capability. I have kept on adding to it because my knowledge base has increased, but the basic skill set existed.”
And then you need to express your vision properly.
Sometimes it can be enough to just express what you need.
Michał Sołowow started a construction company shortly after the system change in Poland. Everything was lacking in the Polish economy. For construction, cement is essential, but it wasn’t easy to come by.
I came to a cement factory to buy cement. I sat in the corridor. I had a technique for sorting out everything, of course through secretaries, that is flowers, chocolates, smiles.…
And some guy was passing through that corridor maybe 10 times, and it didn’t even pass through my mind that it could be someone important. I was sitting on that corridor, and in the end that guy asked me, and he was hardly older than me: “Sir, w
hat are you doing here for so long?” I said, “You know, I am waiting for the head of the cement factory” And he said, “That’s me.” And asked me into his office.
We started talking about what I am doing, what I do for a living, what I need this cement for. And I told him a story, that I am a student, one year after graduation, my company is developing, I don’t have cement, and I am in such a trap.
He said, “OK, you will buy from me as much cement as you want under one condition—you will build me, here, a housing compound for the employees of the cement factory and their families.” That was what happened in the majority of my contracts. That is when I tried to achieve something; then someone said, “The condition for making it is to carry out such and such work for me.” That is how my business developed.
By the way, do you know the saying, “You can have anything you want in your life as long as you help others achieve what they want”? This story is the perfect illustration of this principle.
An important element of the vision mix is to make it durable. Write it down; print it in a book like Mohed Altrad; put it on your website or in the company leaflet, like most billionaires do; paint it on the walls of your company, like Ron Sim did at the entrance to OSIM; or even engrave it into stone, like Petter Stordalen did with his company values.
Every year, there was a convention in Gothenburg, where all employees of Petter’s companies gathered to celebrate together. It’s a great show, during which Petter took a hammer and a chisel and personally engraved another company value statement into stone, to add one to the Stone Rules of Gothenburg.
You need to rejoice when your vision materializes. “Celebrate your victories” is Petter’s credo. “I love celebrations! For example, a hotel opening is not just a party. It is a celebration of the hard and long work that has been put into the project by so many people. It is a BIG thank you to all of the involved, our staff, partners, local community. I believe you have to party just as hard as you work. And in Nordic Choice we work very, very hard.”
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