What is the meaning of a billionaire? A billionaire is a person with a net worth of at least one billion (1,000,000,000, i.e., a thousand million) units of a given currency, usually of a major currency such as the US dollar, euro, or pound sterling. The Forbes magazine produces a global list of known US dollar billionaires every year and updates an Internet version of this list in real time. The American oil magnate John D. Rockefeller became the world’s first confirmed US dollar billionaire in 1916.
We are going to understand how billionaires think differently about Money, Investing, Time, Wisdom & Risks. (Excerpt is from ‘Think Like a Billionaire, Become a Billionaire: As a Man Thinks, So Is He’ by Scot Anderson).
Money
We see money as a way to get things. Billionaires see money as a tool to invest. We need more to get a bigger house, a nicer car, a bigger TV. Billionaires see money as a tool to be used to make more money. Once they get an abundance, a portion of that is used for the finer things in life. Billionaires use a little for the extras of life, and a major portion to create an abundance for life. We use a major portion for the things of life, and a little bit to invest.
We buy out of our lack. They buy out of their abundance.
As soon as we get some extra money, we look to where we can spend it. The rich immediately look to where they can invest it. We get the raise and right away we go out and get a nicer car because we can now afford a monthly installment for it. We can now go down and get that big screen TV and make payments on it for the next couple of years. The wealthy, when they first start, say, “We’ll drive what we are driving, watch what we are watching, and through investing, turn that equivalent installment per month into millions. Then we can buy those things out of our abundance.” We buy today and pay a lot more tomorrow. They invest today and buy a lot more tomorrow.
“All riches have their origin in the mind. Wealth is in ideas – not money.” – Robert Collier
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Investing
We see investing as something we do just to have enough to retire. The wealthy see it as something you do to give you an abundance. We know nothing about investing, so we tend not to do it very well. The wealthy see investing as a priority, so they are constantly reading, studying, and learning all they can about investing. The rest of us glance at the business section and read a report or two on the stock. The wealthy spend a significant portion of their lives learning how to be great investors. We spend a moment of time reading about how the wealthy made their money investing, all the while saying, “How come that never happens to me? That guy got so lucky!” No, he wasn’t lucky; he was prepared. LUCK always favors the prepared. He thought differently, and that different thinking made him lucky.
The rich, when they got started budgeted around their investments. We budget around our stuff.
To us, investing isn’t a priority. Because it is not a priority, we don’t have much to invest in. Investing isn’t even something we budget into our lives. We budget for clothes, going out, vacations, TVs, and all the stuff in life. The rich, when they got started, budgeted around their investments. The wealthy see investing as a key to abundance. To us, investing is the key to having just enough when we retire.
Time
The wealthy have a whole different way of thinking about time. We just pass the time away. We waste time. And we let others steal our time. To the wealthy, time is their most valuable asset. We think money is the most valuable thing. The wealthy say, “I can get more money but I can never get more time.”
To the billionaires, time is an irreplaceable resource. It is the only limited resource they have. They remove time-wasters from their lives. They stop doing things that waste their time.
We are not talking about taking vacations or having hobbies, things that you do to relax. There’s nothing wrong with watching a football game. Those things are vital tools to recharge you and keep your mind fresh. However, we do things that add no benefit to our lives whatsoever. Time is the thing we think we have so much of so we give it away, throw it away.
Here is an example of where we all live. How many times in your life have you heard or said, “Look at that guy with his gardener taking care of his lawn and his maid cleaning the house. If I had that kind of money, I wouldn’t waste it on that. I would give that money to the poor.” It is that kind of thinking that keeps you from having that money.
The wealthy say, “With the time I save not doing my own lawn, I can make thousands of dollars. The time I save not cleaning my house, I can use to make millions over my lifetime. I am also giving in to a business, giving that business the opportunity to invest and get to where I am.”
We spend twenty hours of frustration and $500 at Home Depot to paint the inside of our house by ourselves. When we get done, it looks like an amateur did it. If we paid someone a thousand dollars to do it and took that time and invested it, we would be so much further ahead. Actually, we have a “just-get-by” attitude rather than seeing time the way the wealthy see it. Those twenty hours I would spend painting are way too valuable to me. To be able to buy twenty hours of time for $500 is one of the best deals I ever made.
Wisdom
It is amazing to know that the wealthy think differently about the wisdom found in books and tapes and CDs. The average person reads one book a year or even less than that and we are not talking love stories or People Magazine. We are talking about a self-help motivating book.
The wealthy read an average of two books a week. The wealthy know that wisdom is a key to abundance. They have a burning desire for more information on every area of investing from real estate to stocks to business. They constantly want more information on investing. The rich don’t waste their time listening to mindless radio in their cars. Instead, they say, “That’s an hour a day, five hours a week, twenty-five hours a month, 300 hours a year, 15,000 hours in a lifetime (equivalent to twenty-four hours a day for two years straight) that I could spend listening to tapes and CDs that could benefit my life.” Radio is not doing anything for their lives, but these tapes and CDs are getting them the wisdom that sets them thinking differently, which then gets them producing differently in their lives.
We think that self-help books are a last resort to fixing the problem. The wealthy see them as the start to not having a problem.
Risks
We don’t take risks because we are afraid we will fail. What if it doesn’t work? The rich think that if they don’t take risks, they have already failed. We see risks as something we can’t afford to take. The billionaires see risks as something they can’t afford not to take.
We live in a world that has God unemployed. We make all our bill payments, our VISA and MasterCard payments, and car payments. And we can do all that on our own. We really don’t need God. God so desperately wants us in a place where we need Him, where we step out and say, “Okay, God, for me, this is impossible. But with You, nothing is impossible.” In doing this, I have employed God. I have given Him something to do in my life. We are now working together. The religious literature says that God directs our steps. It doesn’t say He directs our sitting. We don’t just sit back and wait for God to drop a million-dollar idea in our laps. We start to step out. Once we take some steps, God can say, “Okay, go this way. Now turn this way”
You cannot steer a bicycle that is not moving. It is time we get that bicycle going. It is time we step out and take some risks. The wealthy are risk-takers.
Does that mean you will never fail? Absolutely not. The wealthy have failed hundreds of times more than you and me. That is why they are wealthy. The wealthy know that failing does not make you a failure. Never trying does.
Robert Kiyosaki, the best-selling author of Rich Dad Poor Dad, said that nine out of ten businesses fail. We hear that and say that means the odds are stacked against us and we should stay away from that. We say, “I have a 90% chance that I will fail.” The billionaires say, “I have a 100% chance that I will succeed. I only have to start ten businesses to be a success.” It didn’t matter that you failed on your first nine business ventures because on the tenth, you made ten million dollars.
