Life Lessons From Legendary Billionaires

There were just about 2,013 people on earth whose wealth exceeded a billion at the start of 2019, according to a survey by Forbes magazine. The select few who made it into this list are exceptional human beings by any reckoning. They are men of initiative, action and enterprise. They think ahead, dream dreams others don’t dare to, and have the drive and vision to make those dreams come true, sometimes against overwhelming odds.

These legendary billionaires are also men of great personal charisma and character. Whether it is their work ethic, moral values or sharply focussed commitment to a single overarching vision, they are people from whom we can learn enduring lessons about success, achievement, wealth, vision and personal growth and values.

Many billionaires have generously shared their secrets and success advice for others to emulate. In addition to their words, though, many of them teach us lessons by their actions and deeds. Let us see what we can learn from them.

JRD Tata: “Dare to dream big”

Jehangir Ratanji Dadabhoy Tata 1904-1993

Industrialist

“Nothing worthwhile is ever achieved without deep thought and hard work.”

The man we know as JRD Tata was born Jehangir, a name that means ‘conqueror of the world’. In many ways, this titan among Indian industrialists did conquer whole new worlds. He did it by daring to dream big — and then following his dreams.

JRD was a French citizen for the first 25 years of his life. His mother was French, and he spoke French as his first language. He was much inspired by aviation pioneer Louis Blériot, the first man to fly across the English Channel. JRD’s love of flying started here. On 10 February 1929, he became the first Indian pilot to receive a licence issued in India. The first flight in the history of Indian aviation lifted off from Drigh Road in Karachi with JRD at the controls of a Puss Moth.

The young man’s dream could have stopped there; after all, he had become a pilot. But Tata’s dreams were bigger than that. He set up the Tata Aviation service, which became Tata Airlines, India’s first commercial airline, in 1932, and finally evolved into India’s national airline, Air India 12 years later.

Like the best of entrepreneurs, he dared to dream up a unique idea and made it a global success through sheer force of commitment. Under his stewardship, the Tata Group grew from US$100 million to over US$5 billion. The 14 enterprises he inherited had grown to a conglomerate of 95 enterprises, consisting of ventures that the company had started or in which they held controlling interest. Among these was Tata Motors, which first focused on locomotives, but expanded into automobiles in 1954, in collaboration with Daimler-Benz.

JRD Tata was a man of charm and charisma, as anyone who met him would attest. His special skill was to inspire and get the best out of the people he worked with. A senior Tata executive, Darbari Seth, said, “He was able to harness a team of individualistic executives, capitalising upon their strengths, downplaying their differences and deficiencies, all by the sheer weight of his leadership.”

From JRD, we learn the importance of being a humane and humanitarian leader — and receive unstinting loyalty and commitment in return. He once said of himself, “If I have any merit, it is getting along with individuals, according to their ways and characteristics. At times it involves suppressing yourself. It is painful, but necessary. To be a leader you have to lead human beings with affection.”

The Tata companies were the first to incorporate a functioning Human Resources Department, and make merit rather than influence the foundation of selection and career growth. JRD introduced the concept of ‘paid leave’ and pioneered the 8-hour day well before even the United States or Britain legalized it.

Taking maximal risks comes with the territory of daring to dream big — and JRD Tata never shied away from it. He lived in an India that remained strait-jacketed in an economic cul de sac even four decades after independence from the British — and JRD Tata had the vision to break through that impasse and put India firmly in the forefront of industrialized nations. The biggest risk he took was in moving into the uncharted waters of the Indian industrial revolution. His focus was on excellence, first, last and always. “Making steel may be compared to making a chappati,” he would say. “To make a good chappati, even a golden pin will not work unless the dough is good.”

The Tata empire came to represent the very best of an emerging India mainly because of JRD Tata’s visionary leadership. From him, we learn the importance of always thinking of the bigger picture. “No success or achievement in material terms is worthwhile unless it serves the needs or interests of the country and its people and is achieved by fair and honest means.” JRD used to say. He truly believed that what was good for India was good for Tatas.

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Dhirubhai Ambani: “Think big, think differently, think fast and think ahead”

Dhirubhai Ambani 1932–2002

Industrialist, billionaire

“Often people think opportunity is a matter of luck. I believe opportunities are all around us. Some seize it. Others stand and let it pass by.”

There are many stories of Dhirubhai Ambani’s remarkable ability to think big and think differently that helped him forge ahead while those around him floundered. Probably the most colorful one is of the young Dhirubhai at age 16, working as a petrol pump attendant on the streets of Yemen, where he had gone to work. He had a penchant for trading but no money, so he would borrow as much as he could from friends and Aden shopkeepers. He offered them terms no one had ever offered them: “Profits we share; losses are mine.”

People soon realized that Dhirubhai had an uncanny instinct and seldom lost money. One of the most startling stories of how he used money to make more money was in the 1950s when the Yemeni government realized that their main unit of currency, the rial, was rapidly disappearing. Their investigations led them to an Indian in the port of Aden. Dhirubhai was buying unlimited quantities of rials, which was made of pure silver, melting them down, and making a tidy profit selling them to bullion traders in London, where silver was in high demand.

This native ability to think outside all boxes, think ahead and act fast is one of the big lessons we can learn from the life and success of Dhirubhai Ambani.

He was born Dhirajlal Hirachand Ambani, to a lower-middle-class family in 1932. He couldn’t afford schooling beyond the 10th class. He dropped out of school to work with his brother Ramniklal in Aden, Yemen.

Ten years later, when he returned to India with Rs. 500 in his pocket, he was still a poor man with big ideas. He lived in a one-room slum housing in Mumbai with his wife Kokilaben and a child. For nearly eight years, he traded in different kinds of products ranging from spices and fabrics. In the 1960’s, the Reliance Commercial Corporation was set up.

Thinking big does not mean being impractical, and this was another important lesson from Dhirubhai Ambani’s life: think with your eyes wide open. “A vision has to be within reach not in the air. It has to be achievable,” Ambani believed. A staunch believer in the economic concept that supply creates demand, Dhirubhai followed his gut instinct — and it served him well. He knew that returns mattered, but reputation mattered more. Ultimately profits go to the one with the reputation.

Like JRD Tata, Dhirubhai dreamed of an India that didn’t yet exist. Socialism and politics both attracted the 16-year old Dhirubhai, who started dreaming about a new and progressive India, where industries would develop at an unprecedented rate and where entrepreneurship and innovation was rewarded with growth and success. His energy, zeal and active political involvement brought him to the notice of political leaders but when one of them offered him a place in one of the political parties, he politely declined. Dhirubhai was not one to seduced away from his chosen path, and it’s a great lesson for any budding entrepreneur: don’t let anything distract you from your goal.

The concept of an arms-around-the-shoulder leader came from Dhirubhai Ambani. From an early age, he knew that attracting and keeping the best and the brightest would be the key to his success. Dhirubai bet on his people. He was a team builder par excellence, and he trusted his chosen ones implicitly. He believed in creating a safety net for his team, leaving them free to focus on their performance.

His door was always open, and he enjoyed hearing people’s ideas in detail. His empire is a living demonstration of the principle that if you take care of your team, they will do wonders for you.

Most remarkable of all, however, is Dhirubhai’s secret life as a philanthropist. He used to say, “I live the Gita. The left hand must never know what the right hand gave.” Those who knew him closely know him as a man who gave back with immense generosity and with an open heart. He built hospitals, schools, entire townships — and these are only his public works. The activities of Dhirubhai Ambani Foundation for brilliant students at grass-root level, the Reliance Rural Development Trust and the Observer Foundation are just examples of his invisible contributions to society. He believed in Kabir’s adage, “Neki kar aur kue mein daal” (Do works of charity and then forget about it).

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Warren Buffet: “Enjoy your work”

Warren Buffett 1930 – date

Investor billionaire

“Take a job that you love. You will jump out of bed in the morning. I think you are out of your mind if you keep taking jobs that you don’t like because you think it will look good on your resume. Isn’t that a little like saving up sex for your old age?”

Warren Buffett’s first job was in his family grocery store Omaha, when he was just 11. As a teenager, he washed cars and delivered newspapers. The chances are high that he did not see himself as a car salesman or the neighbourhood super-grocer, even though he was born with a keen and natural business instinct. Not surprisingly, he did not spend most of his time at the grocery but instead would hang around in his father’s brokerage watching investors invest. We all know that this was the work he was destined to excel at in his life — and something in Warren was already telling him what his destiny was.

He earned $175 a month selling newspapers, but saved enough $1,200 to buy a 40-acre farmland. Around this time, he used his savings to buy nine pinball machines which he placed in various local businesses. He filed his first tax return at age 13, deducting his bike as a business expense. The boy definitely had a head for business.

Buffett could never understand why anyone would choose to do anything they did not deeply enjoy doing because he himself has always only done what deeply energized him. For him, life was too short to squander in doing things your heart was not in. One of the biggest lessons we can learn from Warren Buffett is to enjoy your work.

“There comes the time when you ought to start doing what you want,” he said. “Take a job that you love. You will jump out of bed in the morning. I think you are out of your mind if you keep taking jobs that you don’t like because you think it will look good on your resume. Isn’t that a little like saving up sex for your old age?”

Buffett valued continuous learning — he once said a man should go to bed smarter than when he woke up — but he was never quite sure whether college was where he would acquire that knowledge. He was rejected by Harvard but accepted by Columbia Business School — and everything he learned there was from a man called Benjamin Graham, who became his lifelong friend, mentor and briefly, employer.

Buffett teaches us the great importance of finding a mentor. After college, Buffett knew Graham was the mentor he’d been searching for. He wanted to work with him, even for free, but it was a while before he got a job offer. He wasn’t deterred when Graham said no the first time. Instead he continued shining till Graham noticed him and wanted him on his team.

Buffett, one of the most generous philanthropes mankind has ever seen, has always been known for his thrifty living. Not one for lavish lifestyles with fancy cars and gourmet meals, he generally survived on a home-grown diet of fast food consisting of burgers and coke. He strongly believed that to become wealthy, you had to learn to save first: salt away some of your current earnings towards the future.

His famous advice on saving was, “Don’t save what is left after spending; spend what is left after saving.” Making saving the first step neatly sidesteps the problem of not having enough money to save at month end.

Warren Buffett believed a person should carefully choose the company he or she kept. His advice to professionals was to seek out the company of those who were better than they were. He arrived at this insight one summer after graduating from Columbia University. Buffett had to put in mandatory time with National Guard and attend training camp for a few weeks. In his autobiography, The Snowball, he says of that weekend, “ “To fit in, all you had to do was be willing to read comic books. About an hour after I got there, I was reading comic books. Everybody else was reading comic books, why shouldn’t I? My vocabulary shrank to about four words, and you can guess what they were.

“I learned that it pays to hang around with people better than you are because you will float upward a little bit. And if you hang around with people that behave worse than you, pretty soon you’ll start sliding down the pole. It just works that way.”

Buffett is thrift about one thing other than money — and that is his time. He believes time is the scarcest commodity and needs to used and given out judiciously. To save his employees’ time, he minimizes meetings, instead sending out a yearly letter to each of his companies, setting forth his goals for the year and applauding the previous year’s successes.

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Oprah Winfrey: “Go with your gut instinct”

Oprah Winfrey 1954 – date

Talk show host and philanthropist

“Your gut is your inner compass. Whenever you have to consult with other people for an answer, you’re headed in the wrong direction.”

In 1976, Oprah Winfrey was not doing well. Her work as co-anchor of the 6 o’clock news at Baltimore’s WJZ-TV was not going well. She was demoted to lower profile positions at the station, or assigned to play second fiddle as co-host to other people’s shows.

They she received an invitation from Chicago to host WLS-TV’s low-rated half-hour morning talk show, AM Chicago. Her gut told her it was the right thing to do although there was no logic to persisting in a field where black people did not succeed and her own graph had been on the decline. Everyone she knew (except her best friend) warned her that epic failure lay ahead. Her bosses told her she was making a mistake, and that she would become a shadow in some other celebrity’s show. They even offered her a car and an apartment as incentive to stay on. Oprah declined.

Why? She believed that it was important to go with your gut instinct. And Chicago felt right for her, even if she was going to fail.

In 1983, Winfrey moved to Chicago. Within months, the unknown little morning show went from last place in the ratings to becoming highest-rated talk show in Chicago. It was renamed The Oprah Winfrey Show, and expanded to a one-hour national broadcast show in September, 1986. Her rise from then was meteoric.

Your gut is your inner compass,” says Winfrey. “Whenever you have to consult with other people for an answer, you’re headed in the wrong direction.” She has always gone with her gut instinct in all her major life decisions, including her TV show.

Oprah is a great believer in the effect and influence people have on each other. She believes in the true interconnectedness of human beings, even strangers. And time and again, she has advised her audiences on the importance of choosing the company you keep: surround yourself with people you wish to be like, who inspire you, desire the best for you, and are genuinely happy for you.

In her commencement speech at Spelman College, USA, in 2012, Winfrey said, “”My greatest advice to you is to surround yourself with people who are going to fill your cup until your cup runneth over, so that when people say you are so full of yourself, you can say: ‘Yeah. Yes, I’m full. I’m so full, my cup runneth over.’ And to know that once your cup runneth over. . you have got to surround yourself with gallon-size people who can hang in the same company with you.”

One of the most profound lessons we can learn from Oprah Winfrey’s life and her words is the power of turning negatives into positives. She was an unintended child born out of wedlock to spent her first six years living in rural poverty with her maternal grandmother, Hattie Mae. Oprah often wore dresses made of potato sacks and was the butt of ridicule. She received hardly any parenting, shuttled between relatives and surrogate parents by a mother who kept producing children she could not afford to raise.

Oprah has stated live on TV that she was sexually abused by her cousin, uncle, and a family friend starting when she was nine years old. In her early jobs, she was discriminated against because of her skin color.

But her legendary TV show, Oprah, is a worldwide sensation precisely of the qualities of empathy and caring that Oprah’s difficult life bred in her. Time magazine wrote about her: “What she lacks in journalistic toughness, she makes up for in plainspoken curiosity, robust humor and, above all empathy. Guests with sad stories to tell are apt to rouse a tear in Oprah’s eye … They, in turn, often find themselves revealing things they would not imagine telling anyone, much less a national TV audience.”

TV columnist Howard Rosenberg said, “She’s a roundhouse, a full course meal, big, brassy, loud, aggressive, hyper, laughable, lovable, soulful, tender, low-down, earthy, and hungry.”

There is a lesson for everyone in turning a life full of negatives into one brimming with positives.

Oprah Winfrey is an effortless empath. When she hears a story of someone else’s pain, she breaks out in tears. She believes in doing good to others. She believes it is everyone’s responsibility to be someone else’s safe harbor else — their safe place to fall. “Connect,” she says. “Embrace. Liberate. Love somebody. Just one person. And then spread that to two. And as many as you can. “The surest way to bring goodness to yourself is to make it your intention to do good for somebody else.”

She has donated millions of dollars with open-hearted generosity millions various charities and organizations. Most of her money goes to The Angel Network, The Oprah Winfrey Foundation and The Oprah Winfrey Operating Foundation. The causes she supports range from sexual abuse, HIV/AIDS, disaster relief, hunger and LGBT support to poverty, rape/sexual abuse, and prevention of slavery and human trafficking.

Oprah describes herself as a woman in process, “I try to take every conflict, every experience, and learn from it.” A big lesson Oprah teaches us all is to never stop learning. Her thirst for constant learning and self-improvement is another example of how she has flipped the dark negatives of her poverty-stricken childhood and turned them into lifelong virtues.

The only person who might not have been surprised that Oprah Winfrey is now the legend she would be her grandmother, who once noted that ever since she could talk, Oprah had been “on stage”. As a child, one of her favorite games was interviewing her corncob doll and the crows on the fence of her family’s property.

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Jack Ma: “Never give up.”

Jack Ma 1964 – date

Internet entrepreneur, billionaire

“Never give up. Today is hard, tomorrow will be worse, but the day after tomorrow will be sunshine.”

“You’re no good!” These were words that the boy called Ma Yun had heard so often in his boyhood that it’s a wonder he tried anything at all. It seems he was not much good at anything he tried. When he was in middle school, he failed his final exams thrice before finally passing. Ma didn’t start life with any of the advantages: his parents were dirt-poor traveling musicians and he had no wealthy relatives or neighbors.

When Kentucky Fried Chicken first entered the Chinese market, Ma was one of 23 other applicants for a job there — and the only one to be rejected.

College didn’t want him — he was rejected twice before the Huangzhou Normal University finally decided to take him. After graduation, he was rejected 30 times by jobs he had applied for. Jack developed a thick skin to being told he was useless ‚ and just kept trying. He applied in the police academy: out of five applicants, he was the only one rejected out of five applicants. Undaunted, he applied to Harvard for a scholarship — and was rejected 10 times.

An important life lesson we can all learn from the boy, who grew up to be the billionaire Jack Ma, is to embrace rejection.

Even when he tried his hand at entrepreneurship, he met failure after failure. Two successive companies he tried to start with money from menial jobs both failed. When he decided to start Alibaba, a China-based B2B marketplace site, he wanted to raise 5 million dollars but heard many rejections from American venture capitalists. They must regret their decision so much today: Today, Alibaba has a market cap of about $400 billion. When it went public 2014, it was the largest initial public offering ever.

“If you can not get used to failure — just like a boxer — if you can’t get used to being hit, how can you win?” he said to an audience in Nairobi. “The greatest failure is giving up.”

Jack Ma, with his coterie of 17 friends and students, founded Alibaba.com in his Hangzhou apartment. He didn’t have all the money he needed, and had to do a number of menial jobs to keep body and soul together while he tried to build his company. He was not picky; he took up any job that came his way as long as he could earn a small income from it. Jack Ma saw every opportunity as an open door — this was his great gift and lesson.

In October 1999, Alibaba received a US$25 million investment from Goldman Sachs and SoftBank. Three years later, Alibaba.com became profitable. Jack Ma shows us the great success that follows when you dedicate 100% of your focus to what you want to achieve.

Many people lose track of the beginning as they approach the middle; people forget their dreams and get swept away in the rising tide of success. Not Jack Ma. A great success lesson we can learn from Jack Ma is to always keep your dream alive.

His wife told him one day that he did not belong to her. She said he actually belonged to his company, Alibaba. She was right: Jack was so intensely focussed on his dream that could barely get himself to think about anything other than growing Alibaba. Without any remorse, grinning a cheeky grin, Jack admitted that he thinks Alibaba, talks Alibaba, sleeps Alibaba and breathes Alibaba every moment of his life.

Staying focussed, even obsessively, is one of the success lessons we can learn from Jack Ma. Jack believes that in order to build a successful business, you must concentrate all your effort to build, grow and do what your business is meant to do. When you lose your focus, you will spread your attention and this is when you will fail. ““If there are nine rabbits on the ground, if you want to catch one, just focus on that one,” he says.

When Alibaba went public in the USA, Jack was asked in an interview if he ever said no to any opportunity. His replied: “I’ve said no to a lot of ideas because as a CEO, I have to say no to opportunities. If I say yes, I may receive five thousand opportunities every day.”

There is a boyish energy around Jack Ma — he is alive, curious, always interested, always learning, and easily inspired by anything. Keeping yourself open to inspiration is one of the big lessons Jack teaches us. He told an audience once in an interview that he learned the most from the movie Forrest Gump. What did he learn? “People may call you stupid or crazy, just like in the movie, but you just need to be yourself and do what you think is the right thing to do.”

That’s exactly what Jack Ma did — and it made him a billionaire many times over.

References

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