The Billion Dollar Secret Read online

  As you will discover, Rafael has a unique gift in that he is able to get people who are mostly very private about their work and their wealth to open up their hearts and share their innermost thoughts and feelings about their journey to success. As you read this book, you are now the beneficiary of Rafael’s gift as you gain true insider access to the beliefs and behaviors that are required to achieve greatness in the business world. And because of the way Rafael has organized the book, it feels like you are right in the same room with them. They share the challenges they faced, the lessons they learned, the disciplines they developed, the solutions they created and discovered, and the results they produced in everyday, easy-to-understand language.

  The end result is this astonishing book that you hold in your hands. As you turn each page, you will find old ideas and misconceptions about billionaires being gently washed away. One of the most powerful things you’ll discover is that these men did not start their careers by inheriting large sums of money that they were able to increase through a little bit of good luck. In fact, every one of the billionaires in this book is self-made. Some of them even came from extreme poverty and had seemingly hopeless beginnings, and you would have easily written them off if you had met them in their youth, but they never gave up and eventually achieved extraordinary things in business through their sheer, unbelievable tenacity.

  As you get to know these remarkable men from their more human side, beyond what you would normally read about such people in Forbes or Fortune magazine, you’ll discover that they are basically just the same as you and me, but what sets them apart is that they have mastered the art of self-belief, and they came to realize that the only limitations any of us have are the ones we place upon ourselves. As you read their stories and come to understand their billionaire mindsets, you’ll see that when these psychological limitations are removed, the potential to achieve anything you desire is truly limitless.

  You now have access to the inspiration, motivation, and information from 21 billionaires who will act as your mentors for the next 280 pages. And if you apply what they teach you with commitment, dedication, and perseverance, you’ll find that your potential for greatness is as limitless as theirs.

  I’d normally end this by saying “Good luck,” but it is not luck that you need. It is simply the resolve and the courage to put into practice the life-changing principles and tools you are about to discover in this book. So instead I’ll end by saying, “Enjoy the journey!”

  —Jack Canfield

  #1 New York Times best-selling author of The Success Principles, How to Get from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be, Dare to Win, The Power of Focus, and the Chicken Soup for the Soul series

  How It Came About and What to Expect

  If you can count your money, you don’t have a billion dollars.

  —J. Paul Getty, the wealthiest man in the world in the 1950s

  In 1908, when journalist Napoleon Hill was assigned an interview with Andrew Carnegie—the wealthiest man in the world at the time—he didn’t imagine the journey that was awaiting him. Carnegie, himself an extremely successful entrepreneur, had the conviction that something resembling a success formula must exist—one that could be shaped into an infallible system that anybody could follow.

  Impressed by Hill’s wit, Carnegie asked him if he was up to the task of formulating such a system by interviewing the most successful people in America and analyzing the results. Hill jumped on the opportunity. Carnegie gave him a letter of introduction to automotive magnate Henry Ford. The latter then introduced him to Alexander Graham Bell (inventor of the telephone), Elmer R. Gates (inventor of the fire extinguisher), Thomas Edison (inventor of the light bulb), and Luther Burbank (agricultural pioneer).

  Hill went on to interview these individuals and many others who were among the wealthiest and most successful people of his time. After 20 years of research, he published his Philosophy of Achievement as a formula for rags-to-riches success in his monumental work The Law of Success. He condensed this knowledge into his famous work Think and Grow Rich, which went on to become one of the best-selling books of all time—and continues to sell in multiple versions and formats.

  Hill’s publication was the seminal event in establishing a universal success philosophy. In the last 100 years, Hill’s philosophy has come to dominate the Western—or shall we say, distinctly American—school of thought on this subject. All of the figures referenced in Think and Grow Rich were American, after all.

  How It All Started

  Five years ago, I was attending a success conference. Thousands of people were high-fiving each other and shouting enthusiastically, “You’ve got a millionaire mind!” I went there inspired by the success books I had read, books on millionaire thinking, including Hill’s book. But I somehow felt awkward. Something didn’t feel right, didn’t let me cheer with others. There was something strange in the air, a feeling, a perception that I couldn’t grasp. Then it struck me. Of course!

  Of course, I’ve got a millionaire mind. Back in the 1990s, I was pioneering e-commerce in Europe. I created the first fully functional online shop selling bikes in the German-speaking market. Having built a multimillion-dollar company, I am a millionaire myself. So what? I don’t feel like an overly successful entrepreneur with it. Others have developed their businesses faster, grew bigger with seemingly less effort. On top of that, my business felt like a continuous uphill battle. Being just a millionaire is rather a mediocre performance in the world of business. I’d rather have a billionaire mind. That would be something desirable for every entrepreneur. But this I apparently can’t learn here, at this conference, from people struggling to reach their first million.

  I left, disillusioned and determined to find a way to learn it.

  Have you ever asked yourself why is it that despite all your hustle every day, you aren’t where you want to be in life? How is it possible that some people during one life span manage to build organizations of hundreds of thousands of people and create the amount of value that an average person would need hundreds of thousands of years to create? What is their secret? Is it just a question of lucky circumstances? Is it their environment? Maybe it is their education? Or does the secret lie in their personalities? What are the keys to their phenomenal success? What do their belief systems consist of? How did they get where they are today, and how can you embark on the same journey to success? What are the mindsets and success rituals that these influential people have used to create such massive wealth? What drives them? What is the source of their exceptional motivation? What gives them the energy to relentlessly pursue such outrageous goals? What is it in the personalities of self-made billionaires that made them achieve so much more than an average entrepreneur and become so extremely successful in business?

  This book in your hands, The Billion Dollar Secret, is the result of a five-year journey that took me several times around the globe to find the answers to these questions. It revives the 100-year-old idea of Napoleon Hill. However, I have taken the research one step further by interviewing some of today’s most successful business personalities—all of them self-made billionaires. This time, in contrast to Napoleon Hill’s work, I approached it globally, talking not only to American business giants but also to self-made billionaires from all parts of the world, representing different nations, cultures, and religions, as well as people from various industries, social backgrounds, and age groups. Today, we live in a globalized society. Asia now has a greater population of wealthy people than Europe and North America. Various cultures, religions, and mindsets around the world have developed their own paths to wealth.

  The personalities of the self-made billionaires in this book are all quite different. They have their own areas of brilliance, their own unique personal interests, and their own individual quirks. In spite of these differences, however, there are specific common denominators, a set of personality principles shared by all of them that contributed to their successes and pushed them way over the to
p. It distinguishes them from everyone else. These principles aren’t inborn. They can be learned, trained, and internalized.

  I call this set of principles the Billion Dollar Secret.

  It is one thing to analyze public appearances or to cull third-party materials and draw conclusions from them, as most authors have done in the past; it is an entirely different thing to ask the super achiever face-to-face about his or her methodology of success, motivation, and way of thinking, as I have done here. Firsthand data allows a genuine, inner view into the heads of these outstanding personalities; access to their true thoughts and emotions; and original insights into their understanding of business and the world.

  This book is the first attempt to extract the success principles directly from the world’s most successful self-made billionaire entrepreneurs themselves.

  What Is a Billionaire?

  The definition of a billionaire won’t be a revelation to you: He or she is a person with a net worth of at least $1 billion. What you may not realize is that a billionaire is an extremely scarce creature. Statistically, only 1 out of every 5 million citizens in the world—or 1 in 10,000 millionaires—is a billionaire.

  It is difficult for most people to imagine how much money $1 billion really is. You would need about 22,000 pounds of $100 bills to amass $1 billion.

  All 21 individuals interviewed for this book created a multiple of that value in their lifetimes. They did not inherit their great wealth or “luck” into it through some other means; they earned their fortunes through painstaking work and had to overcome steep trials and tribulations to reach their current status.

  I must clarify the most common misconception regarding billionaires. They don’t sit on mountains of money. Nobody has a billion dollars in cash.

  Seldom do these people have billions of dollars sitting in their personal bank accounts, either; when they do, this is only for a limited time between transactions. Rather, almost all of their money is invested in companies, stock, and/or real estate. It would be irresponsible to have so much cash lying around. The money would be eaten up by inflation, and there is also always the risk of a bank going bankrupt.

  Artist Michael Marcovici created a work of art, One Billion Dollar, which physically depicted $1 billion in printed money. When the piece was exhibited in Vienna, Austria, Marcovici was asked why he didn’t use real money. His answer? Nobody could afford the ticket. Even if he borrowed it at only 1% a year interest from a bank, it would cost around $200,000 to have that real money used in a one-week exposition.

  An entrepreneur or investor usually wants to see profit from his money—say 5%. In this case, keeping $1 billion in cash around the house would mean $135,000 opportunity cost each and every day. This is more than most people earn in a year. Few people do this voluntarily.

  Many people fail to see the difference between a millionaire and a billionaire. In reality, the differences are gargantuan. Consider the following examples from several interviewees in this book.

  An average millionaire may own a hotel. Norwegian billionaire Petter Stordalen owns a chain of almost 200 hotels.

  A wealthy multimillionaire may own a factory. Canadian billionaire Frank Stronach owns 400 of them.

  A millionaire may own a restaurant or possibly even several. Jack Cowin, an Australian billionaire, has interests in 3,000 restaurants.

  The run-of-the-mill millionaire may own a supermarket or two. Russian billionaire Sergey Galitskiy owns over 17,000 supermarkets and drugstores.

  Maybe this anecdote will make the difference between a millionaire and a billionaire more tangible for you. Recently a friend told me he was making $500,000 profit a year, pretty impressive earnings for most people. He has been making this amount of money for several years already and investing it. His net worth is several million dollars. By all means, he is a millionaire. But what I realized is that in order for him to amass a billion dollars, he would have needed to be born before Jesus Christ and would have needed to save every penny, not pay taxes, and then only if there were no inflation. Compared to that, billionaires create a fortune of a billion dollars and more in just one life span.

  The gap between millionaires and billionaires is colossal not only with respect to their wealth, but also in terms of the power and impact they have. Billionaires literally change the world.

  The Billion Dollar Secret explains what distinguishes the billionaire thought process from everyone else’s and answers these questions: Why do some successful people who become millionaires remain at this level, whereas others become billionaires and change the world? What makes the latter achieve so much more?

  No matter what endeavor you are attempting, you should always learn from the world’s best. Why? Because whether you learn from a third-league player or a world champion, the amount of time and effort you put in would be exactly the same. However, your results would be completely different.

  If you desire is to be the world’s best soccer player, for example, you won’t get there by teaching yourself or by learning from a local hero—no matter how talented and experienced he or she might be. But if you were to get advice from past and present all-time greats, such as Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, Pelé, and Mia Hamm, you would gain instant insights—both mental and physical—that would give you the best chance possible to achieve all-time greatness at the sport.

  Likewise, if you seek to become successful in business, you need to learn from the world’s best entrepreneurs. Yet how do you even determine who these individuals are?

  There is one objective measure of business success: net worth. This is the universal score for business performance. Success might mean different things to different people, but in business it is relatively easy to determine the world’s most successful entrepreneurs: These are the people who have created the most dollar value during their business careers, the highest net worth.

  By definition, the world’s best entrepreneurs are the wealthiest people in the world. Concretely, this means Billionaires—with emphasis on the capital B.

  For the truly ambitious entrepreneur, it is senseless to consult with “average” millionaires or multimillionaires. In today’s business world, these businesspeople are far removed from consideration as the best performers. In the United States, 1 in every 20 entrepreneurs is a millionaire. So don’t learn from the millionaires. No, you need to learn from the best—from the billionaires.

  Among other billionaires, the following top business personalities shared their wisdom for this book:

  Manny Stul, the World Entrepreneur of the Year 2016

  Mohed Altrad, the World Entrepreneur of the Year 2015

  Cho Tak Wong (Cao Dewang), the World Entrepreneur of the Year 2009

  Tony Tan Caktiong, the World Entrepreneur of the Year 2004

  N. R. Narayana Murthy, the World Entrepreneur of the Year 2003

  As you read the book, you may be wondering how I managed to gain access to all these illustrious personalities and convince them to participate in this global book project. Well, that story would fill another book (which I may someday write). Suffice it to say, this project took me around the world several times and let me see behind walls that are normally inaccessible to outsiders.

  Last but not least, it allowed me to meet the most extraordinary business personalities of our times—all for the purpose of sharing their innermost wisdom with you, dear reader. Yet this is not a book about them—the shining diamonds of our business world, the mavericks, the 1-in-5-million ones, the “black swans”—per se. It is about the secret of their phenomenal success, told directly by them, in their own words. It is about the Billion Dollar Secret.

  This book provides you with a road map so you may embark on your journey toward achieving similar results in your life and business.

  Let’s begin.

  CHAPTER 1

  It’s Inside You

  Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.

  —Friedrich Nietzsche

  It is
astonishing to consider how deeply public opinion about billionaires is dominated by stereotypes. The average person knows little about their reality—a world that represents a mere 0.00002% of society.

  This knowledge deficiency is distorted by the media, which focuses on flashy images and dramatic incidents to create and promulgate envious sentiments. The picture painted by the media and accepted as fact by the general public is heavily skewed and a far cry from reality—at least insofar as self-made billionaires are concerned.

  Let’s start by refuting some of the most common misconceptions. The following will give you a taste of the kind of people we are talking about and introduce you to their world.

  Billionaire Misconception: Billionaires are born in rich, developed countries.

  If you think it is necessary for a person to be born in a rich, developed country in order to become a billionaire, you are mistaken. The story of Narayana Murthy provides a good example.

  N. R. Narayana Murthy was born in 1946 in India, one of the poorest countries in the world. Narayana’s family didn’t have furniture; everybody sat and slept on the floor. His father advised him to choose his hobbies carefully and select ones that wouldn’t drain his meager budget. Reading, listening to music, and talking to friends became his hobbies of choice. He couldn’t afford to buy a newspaper, so he would go to the public library and read a copy there.

  In the early 1980s, India not only was one of the poorest countries in the world. It was also one of the countries most hostile to free enterprise. India had a socialist government that had developed an array of restrictions and ridiculous regulations that made it almost impossible to conduct business. This led to extreme corruption; government officials had the power to decide which enterprises would succeed and which ones would fail. As a result, India’s economy was strangled.

  In 1981, when Narayana Murthy, together with several partners, founded the software company Infosys, the problems they encountered seemed insurmountable. The country’s frequent power shortages were one of the lesser obstacles they eventually would face.