What all billionaires have in common!

Earlier this year, someone asked me what I desperately need to achieve. To his amazement, I said “I just need to spend 24 hours with men like Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Warren Buffet or Aliko Dangote." He had expected me to say I needed a good paying job, or a contract worth millions of Naira, or maybe a billion dollars because of my very ambitious nature.  If you must be a billionaire, then you must eat the billionaire food and that's exactly what I need in 2020.

Suffice it to say that if you kidnap the aforementioned billionaires and take away all their assets, share their assets amongst the poor and without altering their present knowledge or personality, they would become billionaires again within a few years. Conversely, the poor who inherited their wealth would become poorer. If you agree with me even slightly, then it's safe to opine that wealth is first intrinsic before it transcends into the existence of material possessions. You first of all become a wealthy person before you actually have the money.

As an aspiring billionaire, I've been studying billionaires for a while now and I've observed some common traits among them:

The Billionaire mindset

Spend few hours chatting with or listening to a billionaire speak, and you would surely be amazed at their ratiocination and revolutionary mindset. To be a billionaire, you must first think like one. The easiest way to predict a man's chances of success is listening to that man speak, or watching his actions. Billionaires don't settle for the less even at their beginning stages, they don't interact with just anyone and they don't listen to just any information. They are problem solving conscious and see themselves as solutions even if others don’t see them that way.

You may call it pride, but they have an unusual level of confidence in themselves and their abilities. Inferiority complex doesn't exist, and being broke doesn't mean you can trample on them. They are important and this reflects in their meals, attitude, dressing, communication, charisma etc. You grow rich by thinking rich. The absence of this mindset is what perpetuates the poverty of the poor. Little wonder the Bible is reckoned at stating thus, "as a man thinketh in his heart, so he is."

 Entrepreneurial spirit

Money is the reward for value added in form of goods and services. One who must be wealthy must be value and impact conscious. They always emphasize finding their own path, creating their vision, and growing it to become a reality. Being able to blaze your own trail and create solutions is part of what billionaires say is the secret to their success. The more you think about how to bring or become a solution, the closer you are to becoming wealthy. Every billionaire simply responded to a perceived need in society by offering solutions to them.

Insatiable desire for success

All billionaires began with an addictive hatred for poverty, and a corresponding desire for success and wealth. This kills complacency and contentment, and avails them the tenacity required to pursue success. Billionaires are by nature hard to satisfy and this is one character you must imbibe. An alert of a few million shouldn’t satisfy you. Billionaires aim for a trillion dimension. Refuse to be satisfied with having just enough or more than enough. My dream is to be rich to the point of being able to lose a billion dollars without noticing.

Tenacious work ethic

You must be able to put in the hours on a daily basis to your craft because billionaires aren't made overnight. Whether you have an idea or a means to achieve it, creating enormous wealth takes an equally enormous amount of effort sustained over a long time. Devoted energy to your craft or idea for a sustained period is not negotiable if your dreams must come to fruition. Spend less time sleeping and more time working.

Creativity

New money doesn't come from old ideas!

Inventions alone cannot sustain and keep you in the competition, constant innovation is unavoidably necessary. If you doubt me, ask Nokia. All billionaires have the ability to innovate, create new ideas and to take common ideas and make them uncommon. Simply put, all billionaires are creative thinkers and you have to start investing time in just thinking. As a recent practice, I devote an hour everyday to just thinking.

Relationship Management

Billionaires are empathetic enough to make friends with anyone. To execute deals and grow your business, you must be able to get along with people, because businesses are for people. They are also strategic enough to establish relationships with people who can favour, link them up or aid them with resources. Behind every billionaire are billionaire friends or highly influential people or partners. You must consciously improve your relationship management and pursue important relationships.

Team building

They have an ability to motivate others because being successful requires that a talented team back you up. No one man can make billions of dollars. 'Two' the Bible says is better than one, and if you can motivate people to buy into your vision and run with it, you would go further than you would alone. A vision is always bigger than the man carrying it, so don't be selfish, build a team of willing experts.

Investment consciousness

Even God doesn't multiply expenses, he multiplies investments. Investment consciousness invariably makes billionaires risk takers. Elon Musk is known for investing all of his earnings from PayPal into Tesla and SpaceX, and in doing so risked everything. Yet in doing so, he made more money than he ever made. One who isn't ready to take risk isn't ready to make billions, afterall rarely is the winning lottery handed to you.

Intense Focus

You must have the ability to focus singlehandedly on one task for many hours, many days, many weeks, many months and many years until you successfully complete the task. Every dream, goal or project must have your undivided attention. Time is a necessary sacrifice.

Coachability

Nobody is born with the ability to do everything on their own. It only happens in super hero movies, but unfortunately, life is more than just a movie. To be successful, you need to learn basics from other people and find mentors that appeal to your goal. All billionaires are coachable even in their billions.

The truth is that the richest people aren’t necessarily the smartest or most hardworking. Sometimes it requires a bit of luck, privilege or grace. However, no amount of luck can replace the need for competence, hardwork and better decision making. 

I'm not a billionaire yet, but Forbes Magazine will tell you about me in years to come!

Ezeme Kingsley Chukwuebuka

kinglyconsult@gmail.com