The Self-Made Billionaire Effect

The Self-Made Billionaire Effect looks at the five dualities billionaires characteristically exhibit, which put them in a different category than most employees, but allow them to have a vision large enough to reach the number of people they need to make their business a billion dollar enterprise.

Great. I spend a ton of time trying to stop multitasking (and helping you do the same) and now this book tells me it’s the opposite of what I need to be doing?!

Not quite. While it’s never good to multitask on a micro-level (for example watching TV while reading), billionaires are extremely good at juggling multiple ideas, all the time.

For example, did you know that while building Microsoft, Bill Gates built two other companies? One for photo and video licensing, and one investment company. Many billionaires do this, which makes them, according to the authors, producers.

These are people with a clear vision, innovative ideas and the skills to bring the resources together, that’ll make them a reality. That makes them different from performers who are highly specialized, and usually very good at executing a particular skill, for example handling a businesses finances (but not coordinating it with marketing, strategy and product development).

Billionaires being multitaskers allows them to embrace some of the dichotomies which make them unique, two of which you’ll learn about in the next lessons.

The fine line between too risky and not promising enough is hard to strike, but billionaires obviously excel at it. What allows them to only take the exact risks they need to take, and not more? According to the research from the book, it’s not that billionaires take more risks than the average entrepreneur – they roughly take the same amount of them. What helps them take better risks is their relative view of it. Most people focus on the downside, when confronted with a risk. Billionaires however, seem a lot less worried of putting it all on the line again and again, if the opportunity is the right one to take. They realize which opportunities are great ones and if they are, then they’re cool with taking a loss if they don’t work out. For example, Michael Bloomberg worked as an investment banker, and got fired shortly after a promotion, because his bank was acquired. Instead of taking another investment bank job, he used his $10 million severance package to then start his own company, providing market research data to big companies, which ballooned to over 15,000 people over the years. However, in 2001 he had a chance to become the mayor of New York City, and left his position as CEO to take it (only to return to it in 2014,…