Can You Reverse Engineer Financial Success? (This Is What I Discovered!)
Has it ever occurred to you why some people can be so wealthy while others get paid measly, yet everyone has the same 24 hours?
This question crossed my mind when I failed in polytechnic, and I was worried about my future. I considered myself an imbecile in academics.
How was I to compete with my classmates when I come out to work?
This fearful thought got me on a journey of searching for answers.
I have got many questions on my mind.
If we all have is only 24 hours a day since, why do the rich own more wealth than the majority? (Recent news states that the top 1% owns half of the world’s wealth)
Is it because most of the billionaires were born rich with money bestowed to them?
On the contrary, 88% of millionaires were all self-made according to Fidelity Investments.
In 2019, it is recorded that there are 46.8 Million Millionaires.
How about self-made billionaires?
CNBC recently reported that self-made billionaires made up 55.8% (Still majority)
So if the majority of millionaires and billionaires were self-made then how did they do it?
Let’s investigate some prominent self-made billionaires to see how they did it.
Someone once told me that the past leave clues about the future
Jack Ma was making $12 a month upon graduation, he did eventually get a high-paying (and that’s only a couple of thousand US Dollar) job for the government for 1 year but eventually started out his own business.
At 12 years old, he would ride his bike for 40 minutes every morning, rain, snow or shine, for eight years to a hotel he would be a free guide for foreign tourists to learn English for free.
Isn’t that very opportunistic thinking of him?
He was not academically inclined and could only get into his city’s worst university.
However, he displayed traits of leadership as he was elected as chairman of the student federation, and he was not someone who gave up easily.
Jack Ma was forward-looking too. In 1995, he went to Seattle and a friend showed him the internet for the first time.
He discovered that there was no data about China and decided to launch China Pages.
He borrowed $2000 and yet knew nothing about personal computers, e-mails and has never touched a keyboard prior.
He did also have a desire to become an entrepreneur.
What got him to become successful was eventually a combination of his leadership, persistence, and forward-looking attitude that got him to discover and see the potential of what the internet could do.
Bill Gates on the other hand, was raised in an above-average family. His mum whom he was closed to, was into charities (This explains why Bill Gages has given away more than 138 million to charity) and served on several corporate boards, including those of the First Interstate Bank in Seattle (founded by his great-grandfather), the United Way and International Business Machines (IBM).
He was also smart enough to get into Harvard although he dropped out in his 2nd year.
He was already a computer geek during his teens years.
It was considered a privilege to have access to computers during his time.
And at 15, he went into this first business and made $20,000 (which now translates to at least 10 times the amount) from writing software that monitored traffic patterns in Seattle.
This showed that he already had the desire to become an entrepreneur from a young age.
Like Jack Ma who is opportunistic, forward-looking (He went to USA and saw what the internet could do in China), Bill Gates (during his 2nd year in college) read an edition of Popular Electronics magazine featuring an article on the Altair 8800 mini-computer kit and became fascinated with the possibilities of what this computer could create in the world of personal computing.
Gates and his partner, Allen approached MITS (the computer that creates Altair) proclaiming that they were working on a software program that would run the Altair computer.
In actual fact, they did not have an Altair to work with or the code to run it, but they wanted to know if MITS was interested in someone developing such software.
Later, through Bill Gate’s Mum (Mary) connection, he was introduced to the CEO of IBM and the rest is history.
It is arguable that his success was partly because of his Mum’s connection.
However, I do have to remind myself that before IBM came into the picture, his company was already grossing 2.5 Million. He was only 23 years old in 1979.
Even if he did not become a Billionaire, at least he would have been a multi-multi-millionaire.
Now let’s look at the last person, Jeff Bezos.
Jeff Bezos was born when his mum was only 16 years old, with a father who is a drunk working at a retail shop making $1.25/hr.
Eventually, his father opened his own bicycle shop.
When he was 4, his mum remarried a Cuban immigrant (On a side note, technology icons, Steve Jobs and Larry Ellison, were also adopted) who only knew the English word “hamburger” when he first arrived in Miami.
However, he did eventually become a well-paid engineer with Exxon.
Ever since he was 3 years old, he had a flair for fixing and inventing things. He was also considered a gifted child when he was in school and was very sociable.
As a teenager, he developed a love for computers and graduated valedictorian of his high school.
It was during high school that he started his first business, the Dream Institute, an educational summer camp to promote creative thinking for fourth, fifth and sixth graders.
He was already more than capable as he also became the youngest senior vice president in a New York investment house examining the investment possibilities of the internet.
During his research, he discovered that internet usage was expanding 2300% a year, and he had never seen heard anything that grew that fast.
Seeing this trend, he took the plunge and started Amazon.com.
Having researched and read all their stories, I can only conclude that all of them have these same traits that if we would lead us to “gold”.
The best way to reverse engineer is to look back at all their past to find the common threads that lead to their success, and these are what I found out.
- They were all opportunists!
They would always find a way to solve problems. And to do that, it means you’d have to be someone positive and have the faith to take the plunge even though you do not have all the answers yet. Trust that you would figure it out along the way. - They were all futurist following early BIG trends!
The reason why they took the plunge was because they could see where the future might be, and they saw how big the impact might be based on the current trends. What trend do you foresee coming? In my research, IOT (Internet Of Things — linking of physical objects to the internet to provide realtime feedback to the user, a 19 trillion dollar industry), AI, VR ,Blockchain and Regenerative Medicine. has come to my attention as of 2021. - They were entrepreneurial even when they were young. But that does not mean we can’t do that right now. They see a problem and created a business out of it.
- They were all interested in electronics, computers and the internet early (They were interested in stuffs that creates the future early)
Should we now expose ourselves to IOT, AI, VR, & Blockchain?
According to a recent CNET article, Cisco CEO noted that there were only 1,000 devices connected to the Internet when Cisco was created in 1984.
There were more than 10 billion connected devices in 2010, and they outnumber the actual number of people now.
By 2020, Chambers said he expects to see 50 billion devices connected to the Internet.
Imagine that your car can tell your home that you’re five minutes away and triggers your thermostat to shift to your preferred temperature.
Connections can range from something as small as a dog collar to a fully connected home or car.
And what drives that? Nope, it’s not electricity anymore, the internet is the NEW electricity.
I’d love to hear from you.
What other ways can we learn from these successful people and reverse engineer?
