Episode 65: Lip service or the real deal?

Kylie Jenner is the last of our series on billionaires, for now at least. What a wild ride! Maybe one day we’ll come back and get to know a few more billionaires in future episodes – after all, it’s estimated that a new billionaire is created approximately every other day! Or roughly 150 to 200 per year. There are bound to be some pretty cool stories in there. 

We put a lot of thought into who would be the most interesting billionaires for Mak and G to get to know. Bill Gates was an obvious choice, super well-known, and his philanthropy is so inspiring. He’s really taking a lead in showing other wealthy people how to redistribute some of their money to good causes. 

And Oprah – we just had to! She has such an incredible “rags to riches” story and she’s the living example of the American dream, plus it’s actually pretty rare for someone to make it to billionaire status just through being a famous TV personality. In fact, you could say she’s the only one. Pretty awesome.

After Oprah we moved on to not one but TWO episodes on Jeff Bezos. The guy who changed the way we shop. There was just so much to say about him that one episode was never going to be enough. Adoption, helicopter crashes, space tourism…he’s sure packing a LOT in! And of course he’s nowhere near done, as if being the richest person in the world wasn’t enough, right? 

And then Kylie. Her billionaire status is obviously a tricky subject, both in terms of how much she’s really worth, and how she made it. 

Some people think it’s wrong to say Kylie’s“self-made”…she was from a wealthy family, and made a lot of money from being famous. But you could also say, a LOT of people make a lot of money from being famous. Millions. BUT not many make it anywhere near being a billionaire just from being a celebrity. She took her fame and multiplied what she could do with it, starting a super successful cosmetics business, which is now part-owned by one of the world’s biggest cosmetics companies, Coty. Pretty impressive, regardless of how she got there. 

So what do all of these super wealthy people we profiled have in common, and how are they different? What have we learned from their lives?

Overall we saw three main things all of our billionaires have in common:

1. They all had a BIG dream – but something they knew they could achieve. Most people don’t have this kind of vision of creating something new, that people want, that has value. It’s doing something original that really stands out. With Bill Gates, it was computer software, right when people started REALLY needing it. With Oprah, there are so many layers to her story, but I think the main thing with her is, she brought people together through TV, which before she came along was just something people consumed. She made it into a community. And Jeff Bezos made us realize how useful it is to be able to buy anything online. Kylie? She had a niche. The way she looked was her unique selling point, the thing that nobody else could copy. And she found a way to sell something that people wanted.
   
   

2. They knew how and when to collaborate. Collaborate just means – working with other people. All of the billionaires we learned about knew they couldn’t be as successful on their own, so they worked with others to make their success happen.
   
   

3. Finally, they all worked super hard and had to get past a number of obstacles. We’ve already discussed a great quote from Calvin Coolidge about it, in particular persistence. And, I love that quote. Look it up if you don’t remember it.  There is some great research that the most important quality you could have for success is GRIT.

It’s a very close cousin to persistence, and for those of us who ever watched a western, we know John Wayne.  He starred in a successful movie called True Grit. He said: True Grit is making a decision and standing by it, doing what must be done. No moral man can have peace of mind if he leaves undone what he knows he should have done.

And, since I believe this is such a key point, especially for billionaires, I have one last quote for you. GRIT is: Guts, Resilience, Industriousness and Tenacity. GRIT is the ability to focus, stay determined, stay optimistic in the face of a challenge, and simply work harder than the next guy or gal.

So there you have it. Wanna be a billionaire? It’s easy! Have a great idea, learn how to collaborate with others to make it happen, and be prepared to work really hard and have GRIT. Thanks for being here, and we’ll see you next time for more Money with Mak & G.