Choose opportunity over risk.
— Kim Beom-Su #BillionDollarGoldNuggets
Don’t Be Afraid to Be Different
Petter Stordalen recommends to go the road less traveled if you want to be successful in business, and not to be scared to be different.
Take calculated risks with the best risk/reward ratio instead of “betting the shop."
— Rafael Badziag @BillionairePal #BillionDollarGoldNuggets
But what do you do if you are the only man in the room who shares your specific conviction? Billionaires don’t get bogged down by this detail.
Naveen Jain fights for his convictions. He told me this story when we met in Dublin:
I was in my first few months at Microsoft, and I had a meeting with Bill Gates about Windows NT. I’m a mid-level manager, the dumb young guy, and all the top guys are in this meeting. And Bill is an extremely intense person. Somebody is presenting about this Windows, and Bill looks at me and says, “What do you think about this operating system?” And I said, “Bill, I think it’s going to be big, fat, and slow.” Everybody in the room is quiet now. And Bill looks at me for 10 seconds intensely and quietly, and he says, “Exactly!”
The meeting adjourns and the guy who is my manager says, “Do you know you work for me and what you did is absolutely going to cost you.” I looked at him and said, “Martin, it may come as a surprise to you. Slavery is long gone. I do not work for you. I work for the company and I work for myself, so don’t you ever tell me I work for you.” And he said, “I’m going to put you on probation, and that will show you who you work for.” And he did.
And guess what happened. They changed everything in that operating system to become a lean mean operating system because I was able to go say, Bill, this is exactly what’s going to happen if you go down this path. So now, the cost was I almost got fired. But that is how entrepreneurs are. They don’t care. They’re going to go out and say what it is, and they’re going to go out and do it themselves. So that’s my entrepreneur way.
Ask for the world and work your way back from that.
— Manny Stul #BillionDollarGoldNuggets
Six Strategies to Develop Courage and Not Worry
Billionaires generally consider themselves limitless, sometimes even fearless. They never stop risking.
If people don’t think what you’re doing is crazy, then you’re not thinking big enough.
— Naveen Jain #BillionDollarGoldNuggets
It’s easy to say “Be Bold,” but how do you develop courage?
1. You need to accept that you may fail. In the next chapters, I will show you actually must fail and fail many times before you become a success.
2. Realize that you are a tiny, unimportant speck of dust and your life is very limited. So why worry?
Cho Tak Wong, the World Entrepreneur of the Year 2009 from China, explains it as follows:
Everybody’s life is limited. It is very short, and each individual has very limited power, no matter how hard you work. Compared to the world, compared to the history, a person is very, very small.
3. Realize that risk in business comes from your ignorance. It’s the fear of the unknown. Your experience will help you get rid of it.
Naveen Jain explains it clearly:
Well, risk is in your mind and your belief because risk comes from ignorance. Risk is like the fear of the unknown. If you know what’s around the corner, it doesn’t feel risky. When you are in a dark alley, you’re afraid to make a turn. If you have a flashlight, you don’t feel afraid.
So if you’re an entrepreneur, if you started three companies, there is no risk in the fourth company. You know every single thing you’re going to go through. You know you’re going to have a near-death experience, you know the hurdles are going to come, you know the business deals that you thought were almost done are going to fall apart. And the deals are going to come together you never thought would come together. So point is you have seen it all.
Mohed Altrad told me he was “very, very anxious in the beginning, but courage comes with experience.”
Risk is in your mind. It comes from ignorance. Risk is the fear of the unknown.
— Naveen Jain #BillionDollarGoldNuggets
4. The more risk you take, the better you can handle it. Stay foolish!
Chip Wilson got his risk affinity from his grandparents, who were entrepreneurs initially selling furniture. They had been caught up in the first computer fraud in mutual funds and had to move into a trailer.
But it was always part of what I loved about what I call the American Dream. You risk big, you can get big, and you fail and you start all over again, and you don’t let it get you down.
These early experiences allowed Chip bold moves already in his teenage years. When he was 14, he got on a plane on his own and went to Antigua with about $47 in his pocket and was trying to live there for $3 a day. Then at 17, he went to Alaska to work on the oil pipeline, a decision that made him wealthy before 20. He gave up the university and education to do it. From the outside, it looked like trading his life in for short-term gain, but it turned out well for him.
You risk big, you can get big.
— Chip Wilson #BillionDollarGoldNuggets
5. See life as an adventure and a challenge. Regard risk as fun.
Risk is an integral element of Petter Stordalen’s life philosophy: “Live life like you mean it. Take risks; don’t be afraid of failing or falling down. Every bruise tells a story, and someday you might even laugh at it.”
Jack Cowin gave me a quote from his life lessons: “Be prepared to take some risks. Life is an adventure and a challenge. When you are young, you can afford to fail because you can start over again. When you are old, you need the stimulation.”
Chip Wilson shares his interesting approach:
Creativity and risk are fun, and might actually be one of the reasons for living.
Courage comes with experience.
— Mohed Altrad #BillionDollarGoldNuggets
6. Have some sort of a safety net. Have your back protected and something to fall back on. It will help you to spread your wings, worry less, and be bold.
For Naveen Jain, this protection is his family:
It’s really about the joy of having a family where whatever happens, someone will always be there at your side, who will love you, trust you, and be there for you. And always have your back protected. And that gives you so much inner strength to do things that you would never do.
For Peter Hargreaves, the safety net is the profession he learned: chartered accountant.
It was a very, very good, solid qualification. Very useful to me. And it gave me the security. If you have something to fall back on, you worry less about failing, because you know you can go back to that.
Live life like you mean it.
— Chip Wilson #BillionDollarGoldNuggets
Are you willing to take risks, my dear reader? Are you courageous enough to go for what you want to achieve, or do you let your fears stop you from taking bold steps? Are you afraid to be different, to make “indecent” offers and audacious moves? Do you handle your risk consciously? How?
Creativity and risk are fun, and might actually be one of the reasons for living.
— Chip Wilson #BillionDollarGoldNuggets
- Drifters play it safe.
- Millionaires aren’t proficient in handling risk. They either bet the house or take risks with limited upside.
- Billionaires know how to handle risk and take risks with huge upside and low downside.
For more stories on this topic, go to:
http://TheBillionDollarSecret.com/resources
CHAPTER 11
Stumble Forward
Mistakes are the portals to discovery.
—James Joyce
Billionaires see life as an adventurous journey.
For Jack Cowin, “part and parcel of any journey are obstacles. Life is an obstacle course.”
Michał
Sołowow likens his life to a roller-coaster ride:
My life is a ride on a roller coaster, which moves fast, very high in the Alps. And I, the engine driver of that roller coaster, keep solving a dilemma: either the wagon will derail or I will miss the next turn. The stations are awfully short. If you blink your eyes just for a moment, you could miss a stop. Besides, when you board the roller coaster, you can get out only in the mountains, and you have a chance to enter the next roller coaster. When I entered into that roller coaster for the first time, I didn’t realize how tall those mountains are, that there are so many turns and stations.…
Part and parcel of any journey are obstacles. Life is an obstacle course.
— Jack Cowin #BillionDollarGoldNuggets
Obstacles Are Often an Opportunity in Disguise
If something bad happens, look for the good in it. You never know what it’s good for. Sometimes it’s actually a blessing.
Frank Stronach, founder of Magna, an auto industry giant, had an experience in his life that made him realize that sometimes a failure is a blessing in disguise. When Frank was 22, he applied for work at the Ford company as a tool and die maker.
They were hiring for their new factory. They interviewed me and said, “We don’t think you have enough experience.” And later on I met the president of Ford, and I said, “You’re lucky I wasn’t there; otherwise I would be the president of Ford.”
On the other hand, if Frank had become a Ford employee, he might have become a very successful manager, possibly a CEO, but he would never have founded Magna and become a billionaire.
Mohed Altrad considers being chosen the World Entrepreneur of the Year 2015 his greatest success. But it wouldn’t have happened if not for an unexpected mishap. The event takes place every year in Monaco. And Mohed is also the owner and manager of the Rugby team Montpellier Hérault.
I was not supposed to go to Monaco. I told them I am not coming, because our rugby team was playing the playoffs that were the same week as the World Entrepreneur of the Year event in Monaco.
Unfortunately for us, or fortunately for me, we were eliminated the day before I had to be in Monaco, so I told them, “I’ll go.” That’s why I was in Monaco.
You can find good surprises in bad situations.
The judge committee has a file, and then they read this file, and then you enter this impressive room in the Hermitage Hotel in Monaco. The head of the railways in Canada, the head of Mitsubishi. And then they start, and you have only 20 minutes. You tell them what you want to tell, and then they listen to you for 10 minutes, and then 10 minutes later they bombard you with questions and you have to be very brief in your answers.
It’s difficult. It’s not difficult to tell something. It’s difficult to tell a good story. You have to tell a story in the minimum number of words.
Mohed, of course, is an excellent storyteller. And as an award-winning author, he knows how to deliver a short but good story.
I was some sort of prepared. I understood that there were things that made them know, “This is the best company.”
And that’s how he was chosen the best entrepreneur in the world in 2015.
You can find good surprises in bad situations.
— Mohed Altrad #BillionDollarGoldNuggets
Where most people see a problem, billionaires see an opportunity in solving it. They use obstacles to their advantage. For example, in the pharmaceutical industry, psychiatrists are served poorly by distributors. Dilip Shanghvi explains why:
Psychiatrists are the most difficult people to meet, because they make you wait for one or two hours at a stretch. Because each patient takes half an hour or one hour. In that time, a representative can do five visits to general practitioners.
We took this business which was not very attractive for our competitors, and we structured our strategy accordingly. Our people had no choice but to succeed with psychiatrists.
If you see all successful companies, they have all solved a problem. Facebook, LinkedIn, Google, they all solve problems, even if people didn’t know the problems existed. So if you solve a problem, that creates an opportunity.
This attitude was one of the reasons Dilip became the world’s wealthiest person in the pharmaceutical industry.
If you solve a problem, that creates an opportunity.
— Dilip Shanghvi #BillionDollarGoldNuggets
Billionaires see even crises as opportunities.
Mohed Altrad sees a crisis as an opportunity to buy. He expanded his company by acquisitions in the scaffolding industry whenever there was a crisis. “It was easy because most of the businesses were in trouble, all European companies. So it was easy to buy them.” Initially, he was buying only businesses that were losing money and were cheap to buy because he himself didn’t have much money. That way, Mohed managed within 30 years to add over 230 companies to his Altrad Group and became the world leader in his industry.
Peter Hargreaves believes recessions have a cleansing effect on the economy and free up good people who are locked in bad companies, “and some of those people actually succeed in business.”
A crisis as an opportunity to buy.
— Mohed Altrad #BillionDollarGoldNuggets
In crises and adverse experiences you learn the most.
Peter gave me this great advice: “You should always learn from everything. And I think you learn more from adverse experiences. You learn more from bad experiences, and I think you learn more working for bad companies than good companies, strangely enough.” You just learn what not to do.
Experiment, Be Willing to Fail, but Learn from Your Mistakes
Don’t expect success to appear at the very first try. You need to try over and over again and fail over and over again. And you need to do it right only once. Once you finally succeed, you become an “overnight success.”
I asked Manny Stul, the World Entrepreneur of the Year 2016, what were his greatest failures. He replied, “There’s lots of failures along the way; it’s part of the process. You can’t be successful without having failures. It’s not possible. The only people that don’t make mistakes are the people that don’t do anything. If you want to stay out of trouble, you can go and work for the government.”
On your way up you will fail many times. Only if you accept your failings, will you be able to challenge yourself in the long run. And only by challenging yourself can you succeed. That’s what I learned from Petter Stordalen.
You can’t be successful without having failures. The only people that don’t make mistakes are the people that don’t do anything.
— Manny Stul #BillionDollarGoldNuggets
Tim Draper, the legendary venture capital investor, is even more radical on this point. For him, “success is continuing to be willing to fail.”
Sergey Galitskiy is absolutely unfazed by mistakes. I asked him what he would do differently if he started again. He replied, “Nothing, because life is not interesting without mistakes. Life is not interesting without trying. Life cannot consist only of positive emotions. You have to, however, make sure that there are more positive emotions and that they dominate over the negative ones. But you can’t eat ice cream and cake 24 hours a day. Sometimes you have to eat onions.”
Be prepared to fail many times. You will make a lot of mistakes, especially in the beginning. Make sure you can afford it.
Ron Sim recommends:
If you want to do business, you’ve got to get your hands dirty. You’ve got to be prepared to walk it “come what may.” And you’ve got to tell yourself that you’re going to fall many times, and you’re going to fail many times, and you’re going to lose many times. And those are not problems. Those are testing moments for you to overcome. If you take that with the right mindset, it’s a piece of cake.
Success is continuing to be willing to fail.
— Tim Draper #BillionDollarGoldNuggets
Mistakes will happen. It’s okay to make mistakes, but learn from them and avoid repeating them.
For Manny, mistakes are okay, but failures not necessary. “The most important thing is to learn from your experiences, and don’t make the same mistakes twice.”
Life is not interesting without mistakes.
— Sergey Galitskiy #BillionDollarGoldNuggets
Many billionaires use experimentation as a business tool. They experiment with their ideas, test them in their businesses, willing to try things that might not work.
At his Draper University, Tim Draper teaches his students entrepreneurship by offering them a safe environment where they can experiment and also make mistakes.
We’re encouraging more of the risk-taking, the failing. People realize when they’re there, they’re safe, they can try stuff. In other schools, they can’t make any mistakes or they don’t get an “A,” which is wrong. This is much, much better.
I want students to learn to be willing to fail, willing to try things that might not work. They come out going, “I’m going to try it. I’ll try stuff. If it doesn’t work, it’s okay.” They don’t worry about losing face or not being like their neighbors. We make them independent souls that can work really well in teams, and I think that’s a really powerful thing.
Kim Beom-Su approaches this concept in a structured way. For him, business is setting a hypothesis and then proving it. “I usually try various things that I thought of, so I’ve had many experiences where I make a hypothesis and then it didn’t work out.” He takes the rate of growth as the main criterion on whether he should continue with the project at hand or not. “You try it out for 6 to 12 months, then you have the data to see how people are responding to it and you can make the decision.”
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