How hard is it to become a Billionaire ?

Almost everyone of us has thought of becoming rich.

To achieve this, we study hard, gain knowledge, acquire skills, and enhance our performance. This enables us to earn more and more.

Becoming rich not only fulfills the dreams we’ve had since the beginning, but it is also one of the main sources of power. Nobody wants to establish themselves as a powerless person.

Becoming a billionaire is a rare and exceptional achievement.

It requires a combination of

• hard work
• smart financial decisions
• strategic risk-taking
• and a bit of luck

1. How difficult is to be billionaire?

According to Forbes’ 2024 billionaires list, there are 2,781 billionaires, 141 more than last year and 26 more than the record set in 2021.

The United States of America has 813 billionaires, with a combined worth of $5.7 trillion.

China and India, the two largest countries by population, have 473 and 200 billionaires, respectively, ranking 2nd and 3rd.

With a global population of 8.2 billion, the 2,781 billionaires account for approximately 0.0000034%.

2. There was no billionaire in the 1800s

the first confirmed billionaire in the world was John D. Rockefeller, an American oil tycoon in 1916. Before democracy was established in most countries, there was monarchy system in most of the countries. Kings or royal families held an extraordinary amount of a nation’s wealth, they were the richest and most powerful at that time. It was nearly impossible for common people to become richer.

The economy was not open to everyone; it was controlled by the king and governing officers. Anyone who became as rich as the king was seen as a threat to his power and throne. Therefore the king would never want that, besides it could be a threat to his existence. History reveals that monarchs would often suppress any opposition to maintain their power and control.

Similarly in present, becoming Billionaire is hard nut to crack. Not have intension to demotivate, but every time a motivational speech will not work.

3. The Advantage

Ash Ali and Hasan Kubba have described the concept of unfair advantage in detail. A question arises: what is an unfair advantage? Success is a combination of two things: fair play and unfair advantage. Fair play refers to hard work, such as getting up early in the morning, focused study, and working 10-12 hours a day. Whether it’s a

• farmer
• street vendor
• student
• shopkeeper

or unemployed individual, everyone is putting in hard work.

Second important part is Unfair advantage, like access to the network, finance, location and timing, all these things are not in your hands. There is a main reason in everyone’s success which you can’t copy, that’s their unfair advantage.

He started coding at a young age, it is his fair play or hard work. But did you know that the school where 13 years old Bill Gates used to go in 1968, was the only school in the world that had computer. He himself believed that if he had not been in Lakeside School, perhaps Microsoft would not have existed today.

Being tall, in basketball is an unfair advantage. Nature definitely gives some unfair advantages to every person. Identify your unfair advantages and combine hard work with it, then you can get success.

Work in different Direction

4. When Everyone is digging for gold, sell shovels

The phrase “During a gold rush, sell shovels” means that instead of competing with others in a crowded and competitive space, it’s often more profitable to provide goods or services that support the efforts of those competitors.

A great example of this strategy is Levi Strauss, who made a fortune during the California Gold Rush. Instead of panning for gold himself, Strauss sold clothing, including durable pants that became known as “jeans,” to the miners.

In modern times, a billionaire who exemplifies this strategy is Mark Zuckerberg’s fellow Facebook board member, Peter Thiel. Thiel co-founded PayPal and later invested in Facebook, but he also made a significant amount of money by providing services to other companies.

One example of this is Palantir, a data analytics company co-founded by Thiel. Palantir provides software and services that help other companies make sense of large amounts of data. Instead of trying to compete with data-rich companies like Facebook or Google, Palantir sells them the “shovels” they need to dig through their own data.

Thiel’s net worth is estimated to be over $2.5 billion, and his success is largely due to his ability to identify opportunities to provide goods and services that support the efforts of others, rather than competing directly with them.

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