World’s Wealthiest People are Entrepreneurs

If you scour any list of the world’s or the United States’ wealthiest people, you’ll see the word “Self-Made” on there quite often.  Self-Made is another way of saying that the individual being discussed did NOT inherit the money they have.  Self-Made is also another term for entrepreneur.  You’ll also find that NO WHERE on these lists do they have a label for “Employees” or “Worked up the Corporate Ladder”.  Now, don’t get me wrong.  There are very wealthy individuals that are working for corporations right now that never started their own businesses.  Generally speaking, wealth is directly related to business ownership in one way or another. 

I took this from the Forbes 400 Richest Americans Article for 2006.  I’m lazy and couldn’t find the ’08 one in the 30 seconds that I tried, but I don’t need the most updated version to make my point.  Below I’ve listed American’s 26-50 that are on the Richest American’s list (www.forbes.com <– Great Magazine for Motivation).  I’ve put an asterik (*) for the ones who are ”self-made” or entrepreneurs:

Rank	Name	Net Worth ($bil)	Source
26*	Kirk Kerkorian	9	investments, casinos
27*	Donald L Bren	8.5	real estate
27	George B Kaiser	8.5	oil & gas, banking
27*	George Soros	8.5	hedge funds
30*	Philip H Knight	7.9	Nike
31*	Philip F Anschutz	7.8	investments
32*	Keith Rupert Murdoch	7.7	News Corp
32*	Pierre M Omidyar	7.7	Ebay
34*	Charles Ergen	7.6	EchoStar
35*	Dan L Duncan	7.5	energy
35	Edward Crosby Johnson III	7.5	Fidelity
35*	Sumner M Redstone	7.5	Viacom
38*	Donald Edward Newhouse	7.3	publishing
38*	Samuel Irving Newhouse Jr	7.3	publishing
40*	Leonard Blavatnik	7	Access Industries
40*	Ronald Owen Perelman	7	leveraged buyouts
42*	Eli Broad	5.8	investments
43	Robert Muse Bass	5.5	oil, investments
44*	Michael Rubens Bloomberg	5.3	Bloomberg L.P.
45*	John R Menard Jr	5.2	home improvement stores
45	Robert Rowling	5.2	oil & gas, investments
45	Eric Schmidt	5.2	Google
48*	Micky Arison	5	Carnival Cruises
49*	Steven Paul Jobs	4.9	Apple Computer, Pixar
50*	David Geffen	4.6	movies, music

This is very significant to me.  Though this is the farthest possible end of the entrepreneurs spectrum, this brings up a good point.  These individuals OWN their companies OR they have very large ownership stakes.  The fact that they became entrepreneurs put them in the driver’s seat of their business’ and their financial destiny’s.  Reading Success Stories of Entrepreneurs is one of the biggest motivations for me.  Although their wealth might be out of reach, the principles of entrepreneurship and business ownership are still the same. 

Business Ideas: How do I Turn an Idea into Profit?

Everyday you may run into someone that says, “Hey, wouldn’t this be a great business idea?  You could make so much money!”  Most people who say this just leave the ideas in their head or forget about them.  They never really take the next steps into turning them into an actual business or researching the potential behind their ideas.  Typically, this is what separates the entrepreneurial mindset from that of an employee.  The employee mindset keeps smart, hardworking people at their jobs working for the man their entire lives hoping to have enough cash by age 65 to retire comfortably.  The entrepreneur will really disect the idea, find out it’s strengths, weaknesses, threats, and opportunities to see if it a plausible concept to put time & money into.  The answer to the question in the title is to just sack up and do it.  Start your business and see where it takes you.  There should be alot of preparation involved, though, to make sure you’re allocating your resources accordingly to make consistent profits.  Here are some steps to getting to that next level of “Should I really start this business?”

Ask for opinions from friends, family, co-workers, etc.

You’re your own worst critic.  You’re also your #1 fan.  When you come up with a great business idea, there always seems to be that natural instinct to think positively on the subject.  “There’s nothing that could go wrong!”  “I am going to make so much money!”  That’s great and that’s always a great start into turning an idea into a profitable venture.  However, to be prepared for obstacles, you really need to have them in the front of your mind.  Tell friends and family about your idea.  They may laugh at you and you might even be embarrassed to bring it up.  The benefit in this is to gain outside insight that you can put into your SWOT Analysis.  You may find competitors you didn’t even know about.  Competitors with a better value-added than your original idea had even come up with.  Costs associated with your business may come out of conversations that you didn’t think of.  They also may help you with new value-added strategiesor different services, or ways to upsell that you originally didn’t think of.  Outside criticism may harm your motivation, but you need to take it with a grain of salt and see it is a market analysis of how potentially profitable, or potentially weak your business could be.

Research your Business idea and create a Business Plan

Once you put the idea on paper, new ideas or threats may jump out at you that you really didn’t know about.  Also, how are you going to make money?  First 3-6-9 months?  What’s your break-even point?  You really need to lay out a comprehensive revenue model for your business to see if 1) the idea is even plausible financially and 2) When am I going to make my investment back.  Putting all of this down on paper can truly put everything into perspective.  This alone may be able to help answer questions such as:  When can I quit my day job?  How much of my own money do I need to put towards this venture?  How much money will I make?  What are my costs?

Also, when I say research.  I mean, try to find out the ins and outs of all your competition.  Find out what they’re doing, how they’re doing it, how much they charge, etc.  This may generate some ideas for you.  Also, this may help you come up with value-added strategies to seperate yourself from your competition.  With my business, I even went as far as to call account representatives of my competitors to find out more about what their business does, how they do things, and what they’re sales strategy is.  You really need to have the end-user in mind when you’re developing a business idea.  Picture yourself on a sales call or explaining your business to a customer and how it will add value to them.  If you feel uncomfortable with your current ”elevator speech” then re-vamp it until it makes  sense to you and your customers first. 

 Also, research the costs.  Vendors provide quotes on their websites most of the time.  Even little things like marketing materials, envelopes, etc. need to be taken into account.  If a supplier/vendor doesn’t have a quote on their website, you usually need to call the 800 # on the website and talk to someone over the phone. 

Go out and do the things that need to be done

Most often you’ll have a great idea and it’ll just sit in your head.  Find the motivation to get up and start doing the necessary things to get the ball rolling and get the process in motion.  I’ve written posts on keeping yourself motivated.  My motivation is money so I read tons of articles, listen to books on tape, etc. about wealth building.  The point I’m trying to make is that if you’re not motivated, the idea will just sit there.  Most Entrepreneur’s either have that spontanious personality to them to ”JUST DO IT” or they’re calm and collected and find inner-motivation.  Whatever the case, if you have a good idea that you truly think could be profitable and you’ll have fun doing it, start researching it.  Start talking about it and put a gameplan together. 

I have a huge problem with procrastination at work.  I put off things I don’t want to do until the last minute or just drop the ball on them completely.  I’m not talking about big items of my day, but little things that will get me to an outcome.  This is the same thing with your business.  No one’s telling you to do it, there’s no boss breathing down your neck saying, “Why haven’t you started your business yet?”.  It’s easy to procrastinate.  The thing here is to keep yourself motivated and think of your business as a hobby.  You need to like to do it or you need to like the idea that you’re going to make a ton of money doing it.  Check out my motivation category for more thoughts on entrepreneur motivation.

After you’ve calculated the benefits and the risks involved with your idea is up to you to make the most of it.  Get motivated, research it, and just do it.

The Entrepreneur StartUp Kit- Coach in a Box, by Lyn Christian

My girlfriend gave me a Border’s gift card for my birthday and I went with her to pick some things out.  Most of the books I read are business or investing related.  Sometimes I read magazines or if someone recommends a book, I’ll read it.  I try to keep my reading educational.  I know that I want to learn about business so everything I read is business related for the most part.

Anyways, I stumbled across “The Entrepreneur Startup Kit” by Lyn Christian.  This is an audio tape that’s supposed to help you get your business up and running.  I travel a lot for my current job, and my plan was to throw the CD’s in awhile I’m on one of my 3-5 hour road trips to my next sales call.  I was greatly mistaken for purchasing this piece of garbage.  I read things and listen to Audio CD’s to learn, to truly learn about a topic so I can make educated decisions in my en devours.  I also read and listen to Audio CD’s for motivation to get myself up and going.  This accomplished neither for me.

Basically what this is, is a series of interviews with people that are either coaches of entrepreneur’s (or business people), entrepreneur’s themselves, or just people that don’t work anymore and love the fact that they have ”freedom” to do whatever they want.  One guy they interviewed was just a real estate investor that is now living off his rental income and doesn’t have to work ever again.  Hey, great, good for him.  It didn’t take a genius to make decent money in the real estate boom that we witnessed from 2000-2005.  The first interview was of a coach that asked their students the questions ”what do you want to do with your day?”.  This was supposed to get you motivated to do the things (start a business or invest in real estate) that will get you to that place where you are doing the things you want to do with your day.  That went on for about 45 minutes and I was banging my head against the steering wheel waiting for some substance.  Also, don’t get me wrong, I love things that motivate me to pursue my dreams of becoming an entrepreneur.  This was so boring, and lacked so much substance, I think I just took a step back with pursuing my dreams of becoming an entrepreneur.

Sorry to roast this thing, but I’m serious about becoming an Entrepreneur and I really think it was a poorly made product.

Entrepreneur’s Motivation

I’m on the road as I write this for my current job.  I work 55 hours per week and am on the road for 2-3, 2-3 day long trips per month.  I am trying my best to stay focused on my side project of my current business.  One way I do this is to keep motivator’s all around me. 

 I am constantly on the internet reading success stories of entrepreneur’s who left their day jobs and started their own businesses.  This keeps me motivated by constantly re-itnerating the fact that this could be me if I put the effort into to it and drive for the results I’m looking for.  There are millions of individuals out there like me who grew up with the idea of college and career in mind and are plugging through the rat race as we speak who then made the choice to take their financial destiny into their own hands.  Most people dont think like this.  Most go through life thinking that becoming an employee of an existing company is the only way to go.  Specialize in something, and benefit a company that will pay you fairly.  Although I respect those who think this way, I’m not going to be one of them. 

I stay motivated by constantly listening to books on CD for my car, reading success stories online, researching different articles on entrepreneurship, running #’s on what type of revenue and profit my business idea can bring in, etc. 

It’s tough to leave the status quo lifestyle of the rat race.  Do something for yourself and put your mind in the right environment through self-motivation to reach your goals and make your dreams happen.

Why I want to be an Entrepreneur…

Everyone wants to be rich. Money drives people. Money is often the cause of either happiness or duress. Having more money makes people happy and having less of it causes duress. I’ve always wanted to be very wealthy. My parents work very hard and struggled at times in my childhood to keep food on the table and to not lose the mortgage on the house. I’ve seen them take night jobs, go through months of layoffs, get raises, come home crying, etc.

I want to make a TON of money. I want to be so rich that money will never be an issue for myself or my family. I don’t want to make money just to spend it on stupid crap all the time and flaunt it around. I don’t want to buy Porsche’s, Tropical Islands, Big Screen TV’s, etc. I want to be financially sufficient and have the freedom to do whatever the hell I want throughout the day through owning my own business.

I like how Donald Trump puts it, “Money was never a big motivation for me, except as a way to keep score.” I like the idea of starting at ZERO and watching my net worth grow. I am an active stock market investor (even with my limited funds) and enjoy seeing the GREEN percentages on my Scottrade account. I like the idea of growth and entrepreneurship creates that opportunity for me. I don’t see my net worth growing in a long bell curve in the job I’m in now. Most people see 5% raises every year. Year after year. With the lofty goals I’ve set for myself, I’ll never get there working for the man.

I enjoy the idea of my business being MY project for ME to grow. In the job I have now, I work my ass off. Not because I want to grow, but because I work in a commission job and my paycheck reflects the work I put into it. Owning my own business allows me the opportunity to freely do what I think is necessary for me to reach my goals. I like the idea of working at home if I chose, or not working at all. I like the idea that I can grow a business to a certain level and put the day-to-day operations on autopilot through acquiring employees and leveraging the work.

Bottom line. Look at all the wealthy people in the world. OWNERS. They own assets, they own a business, they own realestate, they own a licenses to products or patents, they OWN. Trump is rich not because he has a highpaying job. He OWNS. Bill Gates isn’t rich because Microsoft gave him a sweet job with nice benefits. HE OWNS IT. Entrepreneurship offers the entrepreneur ownership in what he/she is doing. You OWN the right to work 80-100 hrs/week and reap 100% of the net revenues. You OWN the right to do whatever the hell you want throughout your work week. You OWN the right to sell your business at anytime you chose and reap the rewards. You OWN the assets you pick up along the way. You OWN the realestate you’ve picked up along the way with the money you’ve made.

I want to be an entrepreneur for a number of reasons. So do most people. Are you going to do anything about it? Get off your ass. Get an idea. Educate yourself. Put it to work. NOW.