The Value of Billionaires

IF YOU ADD UP the wealth of the world's one hundred wealthiest people, all billionaires, the total comes to about two point two trillion dollars. The list includes some familiar names, Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, but also some relative unknowns. A young lady in California, Lindsey Torrez, inherited her grandparent's hamburger restaurant chain, "In & Out Burger", and grew it enormously. She also drives a race car, and has been divorced three times, yet somehow manages to hang on to her life, and her wealth. An Irish high tech entrepenuer, Dennnis O'Brien, has achieved a virtual monopoly in providing cell phone service to impoverished countries in the Carribean. Studies reveal that three out of four billlionaires are self made, with no discernable assistance from inheritance. Billionaires share three basic characteristics: they are extremely ambitious and hard working, and focused intensely upon building personal wealth. They are smart, have good business sense, and know how to form business plans which penetrate untapped markets, and they take advantage of this by so effectively marketing their businesses that they establish for themselves virtual monopolies in their chosen fields. Also, last, but perhaps not least, they are lucky, pure and simple. Luck, as in being in the right place at the right time. You may recall that in the days before facebook, there was a website called "My Space". For a time it was very popular. Then, it vanished, swamped, like AOL chatrooms, beneath the rising tide of Mark Zuckerberg's amazingly repidly growing company. What's the difference between My Space and Facebook? Only timing, it seems. The market was ready for facebook when it came along, but My Space seems to have simply showed up a bit too early, a bit before its time. What if you do not harbor ambitions of becoming a billionaire, but merely a millionaire?, (which doesn't seem quite as impressive nowadays). The secret to millionaire status is; live beneath your means, not above your means, save, and invest, invest, invest. This strategy is clearly outlined in the fascinating book "The Millionaire Next Door". In today's world, which will soon see the first "trillionaires", one can be a very nondescript millionaire. Albert Einstein admonished "try not to become a man of success, but rather, a man of value." Billionaires are certainly valuable - to themselves, first and foremost.