IEMING.com

Finally, I am able to make time to start blogging again. Sorry for the brief hiatus.

In light of giving a quick closure to my previous topic, “Do you fit the profile of a billionaire?” that is long overdue, I would like to conclude my thoughts in this single post! Since it was my fault for being MIA, I will try to spare your long-term memory. Hopefully, by starting with the profile trivia would help!

Let’s start by rolling with the 1st profile…

• Breaking away from a successful family tradition

  Born to a prosperous family farm in Dearborn, Michigan, Henry Ford was groomed to continue his family business as a farmer. At that time, agriculture was the main crop of the economy and being a successful farmer sounded like a secure future. However, Ford disliked farm work, instead preferring to tinker with machinery. Not letting his comfort zone to deter him from pursuing his passion, at the age of 18, he left for Detroit to become an apprentice machinist. After working his way up to become a chief engineer at Thomas Edison’s Edison Illuminating Company, Ford decided to setup his own company. Despite his innate engineering talents, Ford failed twice. On his third try, he finally managed to establish what is now known as Ford Motor Company.
  

  In the course of his leadership and inventions, he made two major contributions to humankind. He evolved once a luxury item for the wealthy to become an essential transportation vehicle for ordinary citizens that changed the urbanization landscape of many societies. For the first time in history, it was possible for one to go beyond their place of residence to look for new opportunities. As the father of mass-production, Ford was instrumental in transforming agricultural America to become an industrialized superpower. If he is still alive, his net worth is believed to be around US$180 billion. I would say Ford’s life portrays the byproduct of discovering your talent, following your heart and pursuing your talents.

• An adopted child and a college dropout

  Steve Jobs did not come to earth with a good start. Born out of wedlock, he was sent for adoption right after birth. After attending a semester at Reed College, Jobs felt that it was pointless and called it quit. To make matter worse, he was fired from the company he co-founded. Certainly, his life resembled a roller-coaster ride with more troughs than peaks. Nevertheless, he never lost his determination. He continued to do what he loves and finally became the most famous comeback CEO.

  Within half a century of his life, Jobs shifted the paradigms of the consumer markets multiple times. Through the introduction of Apple II, he ignited the vision of making personal computers available to ordinary citizens; through his invention of the wildly popular iPod MP3 players, he changed the way how music are distributed; and two years ago, through the birth of iPhone, he raised the bar of mobile phones. Now, Jobs is not only a role model for aspiring entrepreneurs, he is also synonymous with two life-changing companies, Apple and Pixar. Learning about Jobs’ life, it makes one to believe that there is no obstacle too great to overcome. As of March 2009, Jobs has a net worth of $3.4 billion.

• A poor immigrant and a high school dropout

  To avoid turmoil in his motherland, China, Li Ka-Shing and his family migrated to Hong Kong. At that time, Hong Kong was still a British territory. Soon after they have settled down, Li’s father died of tuberculosis. Consequently, Li had to quit school to take care of his family even though he had excelled academically.

  Despite his unfavorable early start, Li kept an optimistic view of life. With unstoppable curiosity and steadfast learning spirit, Li took on all kind of jobs. He started from the bottom and climbed up the ladder. His determination, hard work and prudence eventually enabled him to start his own company, Cheung Kong Industries in 1950. This initial ownership empowered him to build a global empire that covers almost every facet of human life from electricity to telecommunication, retail to real estate and shipping to Internet. He is currently ranked as Asia’s richest man with a net worth of US$16.2 billion. Li exemplifies the possibility of taking control of your life and transforming it to have a better future.

• A bitter childhood

  Born to a poor family in rural Mississippi, Oprah Winfrey often had to wear dresses made out of potato sacks. At the age of 9, she was raped by male family members and friends; at 13, she was sent to a juvenile detention home; at 14, she gave birth to a baby boy who died at infancy; at 22, after a short broadcasting stint, she was laid off. With a series of disastrous setbacks, one would expect her to become a bitter woman.

  Instead of succumbing to a bleak future, Winfrey utilized her talents, followed her heart and eventually emerged as the 21st century media queen. Through her media influence, she used her experiences and insights to connect to millions of viewers. Her devoted audience regarded her as a teacher who empowers them to deal with daily challenges and enlighten them to see the light of possibilities in the midst of darkness. With unrelenting determination and unwavering focus, Winfrey climbed up the ladder from being a broadcaster, an actress, a talk-show host, a producer to becoming a billionaire owner of Harpo Corporation. For the past few years, Time Magazine has voted her to be one of the top “100 Most Influential People” in the world. Winfrey’s life illustrates how a person can succeed by looking at a glass half-full instead of half-empty. You can either use your past bad experiences to haunt your life or to turn it into a catalyst for your future success.

• Born with a bad gene

  Richard Branson was born a normal child to a middle-class family tied to the British judicial systems. When he reached teenhood, Branson was diagnosed with dyslexia resulting in poor academic performance. Two years later, he finally had to dropout. Not surrendering to the “failure” status bestowed upon him by the general public, he started two business ventures. Sadly, they both failed too.

  Believing that he was greater than what life had to offer him, Branson moved to London. There, he started “Student Magazine” to cater to people of his demographic profile. As cliché as it sounds, “Third time is a charm”, Branson finally succeeded. His first successful business venture led one success after another. As of last count, in the span of a quarter century, Branson has built a business empire comprising more than 300 companies in all six habitable continents through his “Virgin” brand. As a reward for his services to entrepreneurship, Branson was knighted by the Queen of England before the turn of the millennium in 1999. He currently has a net worth of US$2.5 billion. Branson’s life story depicts how someone who knows his worth can conquer the world if he focuses on his strengths rather than on his weaknesses.

• Single parent living off welfare

  J.K. Rowling discovered her writing talents at a tender age of six. Graduated from University of Exeter, her life seemed promising and would have envied many who wished for an opportunity to go to college. Yet seven years after her graduation, Rowling’s life was in shambles. Being a single parent with a newborn daughter, she lived off the welfare system. As Rowling put it in her commencement speech at Harvard University, she was “as poor as it was possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless.” To most people, it was the end of a comeback; but to Rowling, it was her beginning to assemble a solid foundation to rebuild her wrecked life.

  Fortunately, as broke as she was, nobody could take away her most valuable assets bestowed upon her at birth. Armed with a formidable writing skills and determination to get her life back in order, she continued to write for her book idea. Through hard work and late night writing, she finally managed to finish her book. Just as she felt that she can see the light, another setback creeped in. She could not find a publisher. After seeking an agent for a year, a small publisher finally agreed to buy her copy for an advance payment of £1500. That small ray of hope propels a simple woman on welfare to become the only living billionaire who is a writer. This is certainly a true story portraying how it is never too late to make a comeback.

• Taking an unpopular vocation

  Ernst & Young just presented “The World Entrepreneur of the Year” award to a clown. Even the recipient was pleasantly surprised. Upon receiving his award, Guy Laliberté initiated his thank-you speech with the following words, “I never imagined you would invite a clown to this stage…” Nobody in his wildest dreams fifty years ago would have expected a clown to become a millionaire; here’s a billionaire accepting one of the most coveted awards for entrepreneurism.

  Personally, I think Laliberté well deserved it because he chose to take the road less traveled. Recognizing his talents in performing arts, instead of finishing college, he decided to follow his heart and pursue his passion. Consequently, he went on a soul-searching spree to Europe and Canada to learn how to become an accordion player, stilt-walker and fire-eater. Eventually, he had the know-how to start a company. After two unsuccessful attempts to jump start his company in Canada, he made a final gamble to do a performance at Los Angeles Art Festival. It was widely believed that if that performance had failed, he did not have enough funds to bring his performers and equipment back to Montreal, Canada. As coincidentally as it may be, his third entrepreneurial attempt was a breakthrough success that landed him with a $1.5 million dollar contract. Consequently, Cirque du Soleil was born and everything else was history. Laliberté’s life is a great statement to say that “systems” are still work-in-progress. Their judgments are similar to weather predictions – they are rarely accurate.

• Son of an orthodontist and a money-manager

  Long before “dropout millionaires” become a popular notion, the road to riches was to graduate from college. Yet a 19 year-old young man decided to follow his intuition and dropped out. Armed with a potent combination of good business instincts and engineering talent, Michael Dell incubated a simple business idea from a dorm room inside University of Texas, Austin to become one of the biggest PC manufacturers in the world.

  During his tenure, Dell made three lasting contributions that have now become the standard of the PC industry. He introduced the first toll-free technical support in the PC business; he pioneered the idea of direct-selling to customers; and he brought the concept of “just-in-time” production system used by Toyota into the PC business. At the age of 27, Dell became the youngest CEO of a Fortune 500 company. Today, Dell is No.25 on Forbes magazine’s list of the world’s richest people with a fortune of $12.3 billion.

• Son of a local stock broker

  With an uncanny ability to recognize numbers and an amazing aptitude for both business and money management, Warren Buffett is born for the stock market. As the most famous disciple of value investing guru, Benjamin Graham (the author of The Intelligent Investor), Buffett amassed his fortune through his investment and holding company, Berkshire Hathaway. Buffett attributed his success to Graham’s teaching, as he would often say “the basic ideas of investing are to look at stocks as business, use market fluctuations to your advantage, and seek a margin of safety. That’s what Ben Graham taught us. A hundred years from now they will still be the cornerstone of investing.”

  As the largest shareholder of his holding company, which has a market value of more than $130 billion, Buffett is ranked 2nd richest billionaire in the world, just behind Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft Corporation. And at the current age of 78, he is still not slowing down. He even became an economic adviser to the Obama administration.

• Member of the royal family

  Born to the Saudi royal family, Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud is no foreign to the abundance of wealth. Despite the fact that the wealth of being a member of the ruling family of Saudi Arabia is not normally attributed to business acumen or hard work, Prince Al-Waleed is a self-made billionaire.

  Following his core belief that the economy is the heart of the country and the banking system is the heart of a country’s economy, he invested heavily into Citibank when the bank was facing a dire financial crisis back in the 1990s. The gamble paid off handsomely. His bold move brought a great leap forward to a relatively unknown Saudi financier and his company, Kingdom Holding Company, to become an international force in the investing arena. Time Magazine even nicknamed him as the “Arabian Warren Buffett”. As of today, Prince Al-Waleed is the richest man in the Arabian Peninsula and the 22th richest billionaire in the world with an estimated net worth of $13.3 billion.

What can we learn from these self-made billionaires?

Witnessing from the profiles of these billionaires, it seems they determine their own success. It does not matter whether they are born poor or rich, or whether they have any disability or a bleak start in life, or whether they are dropouts or college graduates, their financial freedom is the fruit of them taking charge of their life and making the best use of what they have. I would say all of them exemplified these three basic contributing factors of success:

• Discover your talents
• Follow your heart
• Pursue your passion

As Bobby Unser, a three-times Indianapolis 500 race winner once said “Success is when preparation and opportunity meet”, so take charge of your life now and start sowing a seed of success. When the time is ripe, you will reap an abundance of blessing!

Tags: Apple, Berkshire Hathaway, billionaire, Cirque du Soleil, Ford, Guy Laliberté, Harry Potter, heart, henry ford, Hutchison Whampoa, J. K. Rowling, li ka shing, Michael Dell, oprah winfrey, passion, Pixar, Prince Alwaleed, richard branson, Saudi Royal Family, steve jobs, success, talent, Virgin, Warren Buffett

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 28th, 2009 at 12:00 am and is filed under Random Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.