Been studying business, successful people and failures
for years. It is an interesting and enlightening hobby. Frankly have learned a
lot that schools never teach you. A large part of my life is unlearning what I
was taught. Let me share one insight today.
First step if you really want to be wealthy. READ. A lot.
Bill Gates of Microsoft and The Bill and Melinda Gates
Foundation has put out a couple list of books to read. Bill curated these list for
us. He may have read 50 to 200 books this year to recommend 5 - 10 books for
us.
Warren Buffet and Charlie Munger of Berkshire Hathaway have
created fortunes by buying and investing in well-run businesses. It is not as
easy as it looks.
So how do Warren and Charlie spend their days? They read
about 5 - 6 hours per day at the office. Charlie’s children joke he is a book
with legs. Warren says it is good they work in different states because they
would be talking all day about what they read.
Elon Musk has started several successful businesses Pay Pal,
Tesla, SpaceX among others. He is the real life example for the Tony Stark
character in the movie Iron Man. “You don’t know what you don’t know. You
realize there are all these things out there.” Musk says.
The average Fortune 500 CEO reads about 50 books a year. Rick
Warren often reads one book a day. There is usually a reason successful people
have a common habits.
“The basic law of wealth creation: principle of asymmetric
knowledge – that is, any situation when somebody in a market knows something
that nobody else in the market knows, and then has the courage to act on that
knowledge.”
- Dr. Jules Goddard
If you want to create wealth, learn by reading. Then take
action.
