By SShayonto on The Capital
The pandemic seems to have struck everyone, from simple employees to the world’s wealthiest people. It’s not half of the year yet, and the number of billionaires has already dropped to 2095 (from 2153), and their combined wealth fell to just 8 trillion dollars (from 8.7).
It seems like life is difficult up there on to the top. But most of them should not complain because almost half of them simply inherited their wealth. Of course, it is not easy to sustain so much wealth, but it’s way more difficult and challenging to make that much money in the first place.
How long do you think you need to make a billion dollars? Or let’s take a smaller number, how about 100 million dollars or even just one million dollars.
Assuming you are a professional who makes 100 dollars an hour, which is multiple times more than the average wage.
It will take you almost 5 years (4.8) to make a million dollars if you don’t pay taxes and save every penny. Sounds not bad, right?! But to make a billion dollars, you need almost 5 thousand years (4.8K). If you want to compete with the likes of Bezos or Gates, you need to work for 480769 years. But You probably won’t even live for more than 100 years.
So what does it take to get rich! A lifetime, maybe even multiple lifetimes, that’s why 45 parents of all billionaires have inherited their wealth.
Wealth has cheat codes, you can’t attain one unless you are going to use them. Even if you manage to earn a thousand dollars an hour, the only way to building wealth is to understand the system and take advantage of it.
Wealth is making money while you are sleeping. Don’t aim to make 6 figures, aim to make 6 figures while you are sleeping. We associate wealth with yacks, supercars, and jets. Supercars might be in a reasonable range, but flying private or owning a yacht is so expensive that even most millionaires can’t afford them.
Private jets usually cost tenths of millions of dollars, on top of that, it takes another few million dollars for maintenance every year. You can’t be spending every penny you earn on that private jet. You still need a shelter over your head and bread on the table, so you have to earn tenths of millions of dollars a year to afford a private jet or a yacht. Because again — private jets are so expensive that even millionaires can’t afford them. But Yachts even more.
Those huge yachts you see on the screen of your smartphone is beyond what even billionaires can afford. Since their price tag goes beyond hundreds of millions of dollars to several billion.
A luxury life might seem attractive, but attaining wealth can break you. Being mentally strong enough to handle so much stress isn’t easy.
After a long day, you can come back home and chill while watching stream services. But the CEO of your company that drives Bentley can’t afford that, he has no such thing
“leaving work at work.”
Imagine having dinner with your spouse and them having 100 other things on your mind that you haven’t finished yet. Whether you go to bed at 1 or 2 AM. the alarm will still go off 6 AM sharp every single day, even on Saturday and Sunday, and you can’t afford to hit that snooze button.
There is no such thing, I don’t want to do this or I can’t do that. You have to get the job done one way or another, there is no one you can turn to because everyone turns to you.
Every decision you make will impact a ton of other people, Investors on one side, employees on the other, and you have to survive somehow in the middle. Didn’t do enough today? Perfect, now you have 200 hundred things to do tomorrow? Vacation? The very concept of a vacation or even weekends is erased from memory.
What are you going to delegate? What you don’t? Where is your focus, is the budget accurate, is cash flow in balance, how is the team feeling, is morale high or low, where do you place your next bet.
Your chief engineer wants to leave the company, can you stop him, if not, have you already found a replacement. An endless number of decisions is lying on your desk, waiting for you. From planning to everything else and most importantly, you are responsible for each of them going wrong.
The moment you shift focus to HR only, that the moment your products suffer, and your lead engineers start quitting or vice versa.
The moment you drive to the office with a Ferrari, the entire culture of the company turns upside down.
The rest of the team will start blowing the company’s budget as if there is no tomorrow. You made it look possible. the company is making money, let’s all have fun. You are responsible for their actions.
The entire company will take an example of you, so you have to set the bar high enough to create a culture that leads the company in the right direction. Late for a meeting?
Next time your lead engineer would be late so as the rest of the team. Now they will start tomorrow. You are expected to make no mistakes at all. Because every mistake carries with it enormous consequences that your company might not be able to afford it.
You can afford parties though, but that can easily soften you. If your focus isn’t where it is supposed to be, the business will suffer. Sometimes it’s luck, you are at the right time, with the right people, at the right place with the right idea and the right skills, You climb to the top quickly.
But that is an exception because the overwhelming majority of people will have to spend decades climbing to the top. And all that is waiting for you there is endless work.
People think that somewhere at the top there is a place that you reach where you can relax and enjoy life! And they would scarify their mental and even physical health to achieve it.
Fortunately or unfortunately, there isn’t, that’s why a wise man once said
“stop hopping for a complication of anything in life.”
Life is a flow, it stops when you get buried 6 feet down the ground, till then it is a challenge that you take every single day.
When you are in school, you want to get to college, when you get to college, you realize that life isn’t as glamorous in college as you imagined, so you wait to graduate and get a proper job when you get a job, you realize that you need to get a better position to enjoy the pleasures life has to offer and as you keep climbing the ranks, you keep imagining that your next step is going to be your final destination, little do you know that time isn’t waiting for you.
At some point, you will question yourself, what’s next? Why am I hustling so much? Especially when you solve all the problems that money can solve! It takes a universe of discipline and willpower to keep doing what you are doing.
Such thoughts lead to depression and can break you! Chasing money isn’t a great purpose. You see, the moment you earn enough to keep all the bill collectors away from your door, travel to all the places you have always imagined and bought that fancy car.
You lose your purpose to earn more, but the reality is, you didn’t have many purposes in the first place. To avoid falling into depression, we need to be valuable members of society.
And that perfectly aligns with creating wealth. I don’t have to lecture you on the fact that the more value you bring to society, the more money you would probably be making, and eventually more wealth you will be able to build.
Every morning you wake up, the goal should be making the best out of the day, doing your best to move one tiny step higher. At the end of the day, what is success? Nothing but many small good decisions are taken over a long period.
It doesn’t matter what path you have chosen to get rich, if you focus on doing your best every day, you will get closer to that goal. Eventually, those small little achievements that mean nothing in the short run will turn into one big giant leap. Don’t focus on the long run, you might not live to see it.
Focus just on today, on how much you can get done today. This simple habit will have the greatest impact on your results.
Thanks for being with us. We appreciate your support.
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How Long Do You Think You Need To Make A Billion Dollars? was originally published in The Capital on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
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