How to Accelerate Your Wealth in 16 Minutes | 7 Billionaire Principles You Must Know

When you think about education and self-education, what do you recommend?

I encourage people to read a lot of books. Basically, try to ingest as much information as you can. Also, just develop a good general knowledge. Try to learn a little bit about a lot of things. How would you know what you're really interested in if you at least aren't like doing a peripheral exploration broadly of the knowledge? You talk to people from different walks of life and different industries and professions and skills and occupations. Like, just try to learn as much as possible. I would encourage people to read broadly in many different subject areas. Try to find something where there's an overlap of your talents and what you're interested in. So you want to try to find a good combination of the things that you're inherently good at, but you also like doing.

Hey, it's Evan Carmichael, and I make these videos because the thing that saved me as an entrepreneur was watching the stories of other successful entrepreneurs, and I learned from their advice, I learned from their motivation, and honestly, I have no idea where I would be if I didn't have those videos to inspire me. I still need them for myself today too. And I hope that they can inspire you as well. So today, let's learn from billionaires on how you can build your wealth. Enjoy. Rule number 2 is analyze your competition with Warren Buffett.

You have a competitive spirit, clearly. Yeah, clearly. Well, but you got to be careful about what you compete in. You know, it's a good thing I don't have a competitive spirit in chess or football or anything like that. No, I just— I'm an observer there. I enjoy watching things like that. But I try to keep my competitive spirit in a game where I can win. Do you have a killer instinct? Nah, not exactly. I've got— I wouldn't call it a killer instinct, but I do know this. When I want to do something, I always want to do it big. I put my whole net worth in City Service Preferred. $120. $114.75. I put my whole net worth And I've never, since I was— well, since that day, March 11th, 1942, I have never had less than 80% of my money in American business. You can call them stocks. Or equities. But I see them as American business. I've owned a piece of American business for— At least 80% at all times. I don't want to own anything else. I want to own a home and things my family wants and all that. But owning 5 homes doesn't mean anything to me because I can be happy in one home. And there's a certain amount of things that go wrong with everything. If I got 2 homes, I know I've got more problems and I don't have more happiness. What brings you the happiness? What makes you happiest? I would have to honestly say that what makes me happiest is what I'm doing, what I'm doing. Allocating capital. I enjoy two things about it. One, I know I'll win over time. That doesn't mean I'll beat everybody else or anything like that. But I mean, the game is very, very, very easy if you have the right— lessons in your mind about what you're buying. I'm not buying stocks, I'm buying pieces of overwhelmingly American business. And I'm happy when that's happy, when I'm doing it. I'm happy when stocks are going down. I'm happier when stocks are going down because I can buy more of them with the same amount of money. I'd be happy if I was a farmer, I'd want farmland to go down so I could buy more. Average, you know, if I was— I mean, it just makes sense.

Rule number 3 is know how to sell with Mark Cuban.

You got to sell.

Yeah.

Because in my experiences, the CEOs, the owners, the founders that didn't sell, they all failed.

Yeah.

With no exceptions, 100% of them failed. And, you know, when you're just starting and it's just you, who else is going to sell?

Nobody.

And that's the other, you know, and that leads to another mistake entrepreneurs make. They try to hit hiring home runs, right? So when the minute they hit a roadblock, I'll just hire a, you know, I'll hire a new marketing person, right? Or I'll hire a new head of sales, thinking that, oh, this person's amazing. No one's ever hired somebody and said they suck really bad.

Of course not.

Right?

Oh, I found the most amazing person. Why'd they leave their last 5 jobs? Oh, they were amazing, but—

right?

That's such a good point. See, that's why I love how your brain works. It's like exactly— it's so true.

It's so practical and common sense.

It's pragmatic.

Yeah, right?

It's common sense, but common sense isn't so common.

No, I know.

You know, you just ask why.

Why'd they leave?

You know, but entrepreneurs tend to think, okay, I'm hiring this amazing marketing person and he or she is gonna know what to do. And then they tell that to their investors 'cause that's typically why they're hiring a marketing person. And they say, oh, this person's amazing. You know, our next quarter's gonna be great. Then it's not. Then they go to the next marketing person. Then, you know, then they're in this hamster wheel again and they're screwed. And it's the same thing.

It's also relying on other people.

Well, yes. And that's the whole thing, right? You've got to be able to solve the problems yourself.

Self-reliant.

Now, you know, at some point your business gets bigger and you have to learn how to do a lot of other things. You know, when you go to 5 people, it's one thing. You go to 10 or 15, it's another challenge. You know, as you learn how to manage and deal with people. But at the same time, if you're not great at your core competency, how are you going to train those people?

Right.

How are you going to know what the goals are for the organization and how to communicate to them how to do what you need them to do?

Also, to make sure you're actually taking action after watching this video, I've designed a special free worksheet just for this video. The worksheet will highlight all the lessons learned in this video, as well as pull out our 3 favorite learnings and quotes that will inspire you to actually do something. The worksheet will also give you space to write down what your key takeaways are and your specific plan of action to make sure you're getting results. If you want the worksheet designed specifically for this video, absolutely for free, There's a link in the description below. Go click on it and start building the momentum in your life and your business. I'll see you there. Rule number 4 is stay within your expertise with Bill Gates.

The biggest impact a company can have is staying within its area of expertise. So, you know, to make sure that the education systems around the world, that they get good software, and we have a donation program where we've done called Partners in Learning. We have deals with 132 countries, how we grant them software and fund teacher training in each of those countries. So Microsoft's main thing will be about that library access, that school access, the free software, the training, the job skills, and the partners that are in that country, not so much health care. Whereas the big drug companies, we need to get them into the healthcare issues. And the banks, we need to get into microfinance. And the food companies, we need to get into micronutrients and buying the output of the farmers in these poor countries so that their economies get going. So I think everybody's got a big role to play, but it's going to be fairly centered on the thing that the employees know and drives their specific contribution.

Rule number 5 is be innovative with Jeff Bezos.

Jeff, you've built one of the greatest technology companies in the world.

In just 20-some years, you've taken a company from nothing to Amazon, which everybody in the world now knows and most people in the world seem to use.

Was that harder to do than trying to get a space company off the ground?

Which is more of a challenge to you?

Totally different challenges. So one of the things that I find, If I think back on the last 20 years, you have to remember, 20 years ago, I was driving the packages to the post office myself in my 1987 Chevy Blazer, dreaming that one day I might be able to afford a forklift. And the internet, that's 1995. And 21 years later, the internet is this gigantic thing, and there are many, many successful companies, and the entrepreneurial dynamism that you see on the internet is incredible. And really with Blue Origin, this new challenge I'm taking on with Blue Origin, what I want to do is put the heavy lifting infrastructure in place so that the next generation can have a dynamic entrepreneurial explosion of ideas and inventions in space, just like we've had with the internet. And the reason you can't do that today is because there's just too much heavy lifting involved, literally. Getting to space is so expensive and so hard. When we started Amazon, I didn't have to build a logistics infrastructure system to deliver parcels. There was something already— UPS already existed and the U.S. Postal Service already existed. I didn't need to build a remote payment system. There were already credit cards. And similarly, you know, there were computers around and, you know, that didn't have to get— all those things would have been tens of billions of dollars, hundreds of billions of dollars of infrastructure. The long-distance phone network became the backbone of the Internet. But it already existed. And so you could have this dynamic entrepreneurial explosion because all the heavy CapEx infrastructure was in place. For space, it's not like that. The price of admission is so high. So that's the big difference. And what I'm super excited about is lowering that cost. I want to dramatically lower that cost so that 20 years from now, a new generation of people with startup money, real real entrepreneurs, small entrepreneurs, can do amazing things in space. Think how cool that would be.

Rule number 6 is Just Do It with Richard Branson.

I've always had the philosophy that screw it, just do it is a lot more fun than not screwing it and not doing it. And sometimes it's got me into a lot of trouble, and sometimes, more often than not, It's been fantastic. And so I suppose one of my greatest fears in life is saying no to something and then regretting it. So I have said yes a lot. And in the case of the ballooning adventures, yeah, nearly cost us my life, but it helped put Virgin on the map on a global basis. And, you know, helped get the brand established. And it was actually great fun when it was going well, and it was actually terrifying when it wasn't. It was the first time that— well, 5 people had actually tried to cross the Atlantic, 5 people had died. So it was an attempt to try to do it differently than the others had done it, and that was to fly in the jet stream at 35,000 feet, where you've got very strong winds, to be above the bad weather. And we were the first. And then foolishly, we decided to do the Pacific. And a lot of exciting things went wrong on the way. But we missed Los Angeles, I think, by 2,500 miles, which is what we were aiming for, and ended up in the Arctic. But they were great adventures.

And rule number 7, the last one before some very special bonus clips, is stop getting stuck with Ray Dalio.

The greatest problem of mankind, I believe— wow, that's a big statement— the greatest problem of mankind, and it is an exceptional problem at this moment in time, is people having opinions that they're stuck on that they won't, you know, like, I have to have my opinion and that's right, and so on, because it prevents them from resolving it, from moving forward to finding the best answer, from compromising in or doing, you know. So like everybody's arguing over everything and they, you know, it's almost like they're killing each other. And we're in a society, you know, I have another book principle, which is when the causes that you're behind are more important to you and others than the system, the system is in jeopardy. So do you— are you just literally going to go fight? So here we are, as we think, will we fight, or we have— or will we have protocols for having thoughtful disagreements and getting past them?

You guys that are just getting started, you're not going to start right here. You're going to start down there, okay? Probably in another city, another town. I grew up in Lake Charles, Louisiana. No money, raised by a single mother. I was in debt at 25 years old. The first thing that I had to do in my life was not learn a new skill. First thing I had to do to get my life moving in the right direction was self-development. It is vital. It was vital for me that I improved myself and I could start depending upon me. I had to show up every day with some rituals, some disciplines, and start getting myself to trust me, not trust others, but trust myself to do the right thing every day. One of the things that I started doing was beating the sun up every morning. I'm going to beat that sun up every morning so that I have the discipline and the control over my life. So I knew, hey, before that thing pops, I'm gonna pop. I'm gonna get out of bed, depend on myself, get up at the same time every day. And for me, that time, regardless of where I was, was beat that sun up. No matter where I am, I'm gonna beat that thing up. So it gives me a sense of control over my own life. Second thing, I had to start cleaning up my life and my friends and my environment. When I was younger, between 15 and 25, I was doing crazy stuff in my life, wasting my weekends. I had the same weekends are for the week. I was drinking, fooling around with a bunch of bad things, bad people, making poor choices. At 25 years old, I cleaned it all up, quit going to those places, quit using those things, quit hanging out with people that did not have ethics. And discipline in their life that weren't committed to the same things that I was. I wanted to build something in my life. I wanted to become someone. And to do that, to become someone in the eyes of the world, the first thing I had to do was become someone I could depend on. So put some things together, 3 or 4 things you can do every day to start the day, kickstart your day, get going in your day to give you a sense of respect for yourself, accomplishment for yourself. Look, just beating that sun up every morning gives me the sense of accomplishment that I did what I said, said I was going to do, that I woke up when I said I would wake up. And I start building respect for myself, start believing in myself so that I can go out into the world. And maybe, maybe, maybe today, maybe today when I go into this meeting that I'm dressed for, maybe they'll believe in me as much as I believe in me, and that'll show up in a contract, a deal, maybe even some money. Beat the setup.

Because you made it this far in the video, I want to celebrate you. Most people start and don't finish. Most people never actually follow through. Most people say they want something, but they don't ever do the work to actually get it. But you are different. You are special. Believe Nation, you made it here all the way to the end, and I love you. So as a special celebration, if you put a hashtag #believe down in the comments below on this video, I will showcase you and celebrate you somewhere on the screen in a future video because you are awesome. If you want to know how billionaires think and get some success advice from the top, check the video right there next to me. I think you'll love it. Continue to believe, and I'll see you there.

Don't say it's all going to be great, you know, I'll do this and I'll do that, and, you know, I'm just marking time to get to be older. That, I've told people, that's like saving up sex for your old age. I mean, it just is not a—