Billions Come One Dollar at a Time

Every billion dollars you make must first come one dollar at a time. Except you inherited billions at your birth or won a series of jackpots, financial success is incremental, from one level to a higher level. But it starts with a start, a beginning.

 

You can burn the midnight candle, you can work your way up the shop floor. You can create a new gadget, an app, a software programme, a new company. Every billionaire today is an entrepreneur adding value to the world, changing lives, improving livelihood, making money by making others rich and satisfied. Does it surprise you that most billionaires are themselves surrounded by rich wealthy people.

So how do you go about this? Lets look at what Justine Musk, ex-wife of Billionaire Elon Musk has to say about this in a Quora  chat in answer to if one’s desire and determination to become a billionaire are enough to make him one.

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Elon Musk

I’m assuming you know who Elon Musk is, right? He is worth over 12 billion dollars and the founder of PayPal and CEO of Tesla – recently the most valued brand in the world, and Spacex – doing what only NASA could have done in the past.

Justine advises that you first you shouldn’t be thinking about the money, but on what you can give to the world.  “Shift your focus away from what you want (a billion dollars) and get deeply, intensely curious about what the world wants and needs. Ask yourself what you have the potential to offer that is so unique and compelling and helpful that no computer could replace you, no one could outsource you, no one could steal your product and make it better and then club you into oblivion (not literally). Then develop that potential. Choose one thing and become a master of it. Choose a second thing and become a master of that. When you become a master of two worlds (say, engineering and business), you can bring them together in a way that will a) introduce hot ideas to each other, so they can have idea sex and make idea babies that no one has seen before and b) create a competitive advantage because you can move between worlds, speak both languages, connect the tribes, mash the elements to spark fresh creative insight until you wake up with the epiphany that changes your life.

The world doesn’t throw a billion dollars at a person because the person wants it or works so hard they feel they deserve it. (The world does not care what you want or deserve.) The world gives you money in exchange for something it perceives to be of equal or greater value: something that transforms an aspect of the culture, reworks a familiar story or introduces a new one, alters the way people think about the category and make use of it in daily life. There is no road map, no blueprint for this; a lot of people will give you a lot of advice, and most of it will be bad, and a lot of it will be good and sound but you’ll have to figure out how it doesn’t apply to you because you’re coming from an unexpected angle. And you’ll be doing it alone, until you develop the charisma and credibility to attract the talent you need to come with you.”

So, there you have it. This is where the early dollars begin. Billions don’t just pour in at the beginning. Get your head of the billion dollar clouds and get to work offering the world, your immediate community what it needs. It requires faith, sweat, and pain. The dollars will  trickle in when you get it right. Even at the point it could go bust, its going to be tough, but you have to keep at it until the flow becomes steady and regular.

Are you ready for the first dollar$? Yes? What do you have to give to the world right now, right where you are?

 

 

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