Posted almost 8 years ago

7 Ways $500 Million Net Worth Individuals Created Extreme Wealth

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John Bowen, who founded four multi-million dollar businesses, authored more then 15 books, and is a regular columnist for The Huffington Post and Financial Planning, recently conducted a study of 3,500 successful business owners to determine exactly how they were able to achieve such high levels of success.

These aren’t your everyday entrepreneurs. They are the super rich – people with $500 million or more.

The study found seven principles that were common between these wealthy individuals.

In our recent conversation, John outlined these seven principles of the super rich. Adhere to them and maybe, just maybe, you will join the ranks of the billionaire class!

1 – Commitment to Extreme Wealth

Number one is a commitment to extreme wealth.

Extremely wealthy individuals share a similar mindset. They consciously decide it’s what they want to do, which at the same time means they’re willfully committing to the amount of work and effort required to attain millionaire and billionaire status.

It is not a commitment to an abstract goal, but a defined number. “What’s your number? That’s what you’re asking,” John said. “Commit to extreme wealth – just determine whatever that means to you. For some people, it’s a million dollars. For some people it’s a billion. It’s anywhere in between.”

It’s both quantifiable and personal.

What’s you number?

2 – Enlightened Self-Interest

The super rich knew exactly what they wanted and consciously decided it’s what they wanted, which varies from person to person. Then, they engaged in enlightened self-interest.

Here’s how John explained enlightened self-interest: “What you want to do is you want to determine your counterparty – whoever you’re going to do the deal with, [who] you’re negotiating with, [and who] you’re partnering with. What is their criterion for success, too? And then you’re going to find that and leverage it to use it.”

Business isn’t done in a vacuum, and it is extremely difficult to become super wealthy on your own. You’ll need to work with others, but it shouldn’t be just anyone.

When John or others committed to extreme wealth are going to do a deal with someone, John says, “I’m the first to make sure that whatever I’m doing is going to be aligned for my success criteria. Then, I’m going to try and gain a better understanding of what [they] want to accomplish. Can I help [them] advance what [they] want to achieve, and will that move me toward my success? Then I’m going to go ahead and negotiate in good faith to have that happen.”

Keep in mind that this isn’t selfish self-interest, but enlightened self-interest. John says, “You never want to burn the counterparty, whoever you’re working with, because we’re in it for the rest of our lives. You want to make silence, and one of the things you’ll find about billionaires is they’re silent a lot. They’re letting you do a lot of the conversation, and one of the biggest risks of all is so many people negotiate with themselves. They’re going through all these mind games. What we want to do is hear from the counterparty how we can help.”

You want the “I’ll scratch your back, and you’ll scratch mine,” reciprocal relationship, not “I’m going to exploit this person to achieve my goals and then throw them to the wayside once I’ve done so.” The latter is a recipe for disaster.

3 – Put Yourself in a Line of Money

Number three is the super rich put themselves in a line of money. “[For] people with $25 million or more of financial assets, 9 out of 10 made it being an entrepreneur (business owner),” John said, which includes real estate.

“If you’re going to be successful, you want to be successful on purpose,” John said. “If you’re going to do a nine to five job and you’re going to do it well, you can have a great life, but you’re not going to become extremely wealthy. You’re not in the line of money. Unless you have an equity ownership, you’re not in the line of money.”

If you are reading this post, you are likely a real estate investor, so you should already have this principle covered.

4 – Pay Everyone Involved

A common stereotype for the wealthy is that they are cheap with their employees and/or business partners. However, according to John’s study, this isn’t the case. The super rich are “very deliberate on who they hire,” John said. “They work with the top talent, and they make sure they’re taken care of.”

You want to motivate and inspire your talented employees, they want to make money and grow as entrepreneurs themselves, and good pay is a must to ensure an alignment of interests.

5 – Network is your Net Worth

The super rich are extremely well connected, and they focus on deliberately forming relationships that create value and result in economic gain and win-win scenarios.

John says a super rich network is “somebody that I can get on the phone, and we can have a conversation and create value together in our collective, enlightened self-interest, and we’re going to maintain that relationship over time.”

This is not your best friend network. These are the business people that can help you reach your extreme wealth goal, and you’re going to do it for them as well.

6 – Failure to Refine and Refocus

Another characteristic of the extremely rich is they are okay with failing. But they don’t fail and go sulk in a corner. They fail, analyze their mistakes, refocus, and try again.

They are confident enough to test different strategies without fear of failing.

John says, “The nice thing in today’s world [is] the cost of testing anything has gone way down, whether you’re creating products, the ability to 3D print, whether you’re doing it electronically, the Internet, buying a few ads digitally. It’s very low cost.”

“Good business people always mitigate risk – we’re not big risk takers. But what we want to do when we fail, we want to fail quickly, and then [ask] how do we avoid making the same mistake repeatedly? And more importantly, doing an autopsy so we can see ‘Is there some value here that we can capture and tweak it, refine it, [and] refocus it to create value?’”

The key takeaway here is when testing something, if you’re going to fail, fail quickly!

7 – Stay Focused on Extreme Wealth

The final principle may seem redundant, but that is because it’s the most important principle. The super rich didn’t just make the initial commitment to extreme wealth and then forgot about it. It is always top of mind and something they continuously focus on.

Here’s how John says the super rich remained focused on their commitment: “It’s always keeping number one in place. One of the things I like to do is to take a look, from the standpoint of ‘Where are you spending your time, your money and your energy?’ because really time isn’t an [infinite] resource, it’s energy. [So] take your calendar … and look at it for a week. We can really get caught up in going ahead and thinking because we’re so busy, we’re doing well; what I find over and over again (and it’s one that I struggle with, too; and many business owners and entrepreneurs do) is it’s so easy to lose track of what’s working and get defused… And as we get defused, boy, we’re in trouble. So it’s focus, focus, FOCUS.”

Conclusion

Based on a study of over 3,000 individuals with a net worth over $500 million, there are 7 common principles they all followed:

Commitment to Extreme Wealth
Enlightened Self-Interest
In the Line of Money
Pay Everyone Involved
Networking like a Machine
Failure to Refine and Refocus
Stay Focused on Extreme Wealth

If you have any comments or questions, leave a comment below.