Rags to riches - life lessons from a few billionaires

If there’s one thing that billionaires have in common it’s a relentless work ethic, a willingness to take risks, a complete lack of complacency and a voracious desire for money and success. Here we list a few lessons we can all learn from some of the world’s most successful people – past and present. 

Mark Zuckerburg 

Mark Zuckerberg ranks as the fifth richest person in the world, and at 33 years old that’s quite an achievement. A computer programming prodigy, Mark is the man behind Facebook, the social media phenomenon that has connected a billion people. What life lessons can we take from him? Here are a few of our favourites: 

1. Passion over everything – find the thing that you are super passionate about and just do it. Every day.
2. Always do the most important thing you could be doing.
3. If you aren’t breaking things, you aren’t moving fast enough.
4. Don’t be intimidated by competition – just do it better than them. 

Bill Gates 

Bill Gates is one of the world’s most influential people and as the co-founder of Microsoft he is currently ranked as the richest person in the world. There is no doubt that he has accomplished more wealth and success than anyone of our era, but what we love about Bill Gates is the fact that he uses his considerable wealth to improve lives and prevent deaths through his many charitable donations. Here are some valuable life lessons we can all learn from him: 

1. Focus is the most important ingredient to success. If the choices you make today aren’t supporting the dreams you have for tomorrow, you’re doing the wrong thing.
2. Life is not fair – get used to it.
3. Don’t compare yourself with anyone else in this world. If you do, you’re insulting yourself.
4. Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.
5. If I’d had some idea of the finish line, don’t you think I would have crossed it years ago? 

Sam Walton 

Sam Walton was the founder of the Wal-Mart chain of discount stores in the USA – a business that’s currently ranked number 1 on the Fortune 500 list with a market value of $219 billion. Sam changed the face of retail in America by selling things far cheaper than his competitors – he’d make half the profit of his competitors but he would sell three times more than them, making a far better overall profit. 

Sam died 25 years ago but his inspirational memoir, "Sam Walton: Made in America” is a highly motivational book with plenty of insights that are still relevant today about how Sam became one of the world’s richest men. Some of his keys to success were: 

1. High expectations are the key to everything.
2. Pick yourself up and get on with it – do it all over again, only better this time
3. Get up every day bound and determined to improve something.
4. Swim upstream. Go the other way. Ignore the conventional wisdom.
5. If you love your work, you’ll be out there every day trying to do it the best you possibly can, and pretty soon everybody around will catch the passion from you – like a fever. 

Chris Gardner 

Chris may not be a household name for many of us but if you’ve ever watched Will Smith in The Pursuit of Happyness you’ll know who we’re talking about. The film chronicles Chris’s journey from homeless man to multi-billionaire, a self-made entrepreneur who refused to give up even when all the odds seemed stacked against him. Here are a few words of advice from Chris: 

1. The world is your oyster. It’s up to you to find the pearls.
2. Passion is everything. In fact, you’ve got to be borderline fanatical about what you do.
3. You can only depend on yourself. The cavalry ain’t coming.
4. It’s okay to fail. It’s not okay to quit.

Focus, drive and passion seem to be common themes amongst billionaires and there are plenty of lessons we can all apply to the way we approach life and the challenges it throws our way.

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