What 3 billionaires taught me
Much of what I have done in my life was due to hard lessons gained due to failures, but much was learnt from the amazing people that crossed my path, from a wise janitor from my first office to corporate magnates. My mission in life has been trying to put order into these - often contradictory - lessons.
In this journey I’ve had the pleasure of getting to know some billionaires, people that achieved the peak of extreme success. Some famous, other anonymous. Three have made a strong impression on me and from the three of them I created the basis for my course of action in my career.
The first billionaire I met was a mess, in every way you can think of. the man did not know what appointments he had, which direction his company was going, he would make more meetings in a day than it is humanly possible to attend, always making someone feeling disappointed. For yearls I heard this kind of behavior is the dead sentence for businesses but this gentleman was doing great! I narrowed his succes down to his immense charisma. He could do no wrong because he was an innate charming person and with the years he developed an incredibly charismatic, socially-concerned and diplomatic way of doing things. All this was mixed with genuine enthusiasm for his work, never-ending energy. I am pretty sure several people that otherwise would dump him felt much attraction for his authentic ways and this levelled him to where he is today.
The second billionaire was a very strict man. He worked in a field very compatible woth his background and even as CEO he would still be mainly busy with his field of expertise, outsourcing everything else to his team. Another unorthodox approach, since I have seen countless business fail exactly because of this approach. There was a difference with him, though. Subtle difference but powerful. He spent his days 60% busy with his product, affiliate prodcuts, ensuring quality and diligence into them and as he was extremely good in that, his product vision helped and led all other sectors of the company. The other 40% of his time he spent on HR, which was very odd to me to spent hours talking about people, analyzing people. He would stay till late at night going through the dossiers of his employees, sleep 3 hours and go back to product division. Then it hit me: as he knew that he was at his core a product developer, he knew that his success relied on a perfect team, both in acquiring them, understanding them and keeping hem productive. From the secretary to the highest executive. He would lead by his product vision and by understanding each employee's needs and greeds even better tham themselves.
The third one was extremely succesful and energetic. He would cut incredible deals that would leave me astonished. However I never met someone, poor or richer that fit so perfectly into the "socipath" tag as this man. He was ruthless, and not ruthless in the way every entrepreneurs learns to be after a while in business. He would intimidate, push, threat l, damage wilfully and purposefully to make his way. Even though we live in a society that stills glorify this kind of behavior, I met several big shots that loathed him and for me was surprising that this man that had wronged so many people still could build teams, find partners and investors. One day I boldly approached him asking this and he answered me "Kauan, there will always be another fool to be fooled out there". I realized then, that his entrepreneurial genius was to always create good circumstances for himself by finding new niches for new people. His reputation sucked, but his agility in moving forward was faster than gossip, which made him an incredibly succesful man.
Even though there are several lessons I took from each of these people, the main factor of convergence in these stories was the constant flow in which they kept working. I never selaw any of them in long breaks or slacking off. They were 100% aware that regardless of which succesful behavior they had it needed to be repeated over and over again ad infinitum they would reach immense success. I call it the Billionaire Flow. My advice is to try all kinds of approaches and once you figure out one that really works, repeat it (with obvious reiventions and adaptations along the way) as long as it keeps generating results. This flow enables you to always be putting out work and even through some things might fail, it will not affect the body of work, sinply because it is non stoppable. Foght against inertia and keep in the flow of productivity, and you will see wonders happen to your career.
The other was a psychopath with good circumstances
But what I understood more is the flow!
