Noah Kagan interviewed 70 year old billionaires and recently quoted 10 of the most important life tips he learned from each of them.
Here they are:
1. Learn to sell.
Everything you do is sales.
You need to be able to sell your product to customers, sell your ideas to team members or investors, and sell your skill set to employers.
2. Lean into your fears.
Success often involves overcoming fears, doubts and skepticism from others, but mostly from yourself.
3. Live your life in decades:
20’s: Try everything, do interesting stuff, and experiment with different careers
30’s: Figure out what you do best having spent a decade trying different things
40’s: Make money from what you do best
50’s: Try not to do too much
4. Learn from your competition.
Use their weaknesses to your advantage, and become better than them at their own strengths.
5. Enjoy your business, but never love your business.
As soon as you love your business, you lose all objectivity and won’t make rational decisions.
6. Be persistent.
Every billionaire I have interviewed has faced adversity, but persisted anyway.
That’s what separates the successful from the rest.
7. Money changes everything.
When the money hits the table, that's when you find out the real character of people.
Figure out who shares your values, and cut ties with anyone who doesn’t.
8. You don’t build your business, your customers do.
It doesn’t matter what you think of your product, it matters what your customers think.
No customers = no money.
9. There’s no such thing as an overnight success.
Every “overnight success” story is actually a story of years of hard work and persistence.
No one became a billionaire in 24 hours.
10. The best decisions don’t often follow rationality.
What do all self-made billionaires have in common? They go against rational and take huge risks.
Huge risks = huge rewards.
Here they are:
1. Learn to sell.
Everything you do is sales.
You need to be able to sell your product to customers, sell your ideas to team members or investors, and sell your skill set to employers.
2. Lean into your fears.
Success often involves overcoming fears, doubts and skepticism from others, but mostly from yourself.
3. Live your life in decades:
20’s: Try everything, do interesting stuff, and experiment with different careers
30’s: Figure out what you do best having spent a decade trying different things
40’s: Make money from what you do best
50’s: Try not to do too much
4. Learn from your competition.
Use their weaknesses to your advantage, and become better than them at their own strengths.
5. Enjoy your business, but never love your business.
As soon as you love your business, you lose all objectivity and won’t make rational decisions.
6. Be persistent.
Every billionaire I have interviewed has faced adversity, but persisted anyway.
That’s what separates the successful from the rest.
7. Money changes everything.
When the money hits the table, that's when you find out the real character of people.
Figure out who shares your values, and cut ties with anyone who doesn’t.
8. You don’t build your business, your customers do.
It doesn’t matter what you think of your product, it matters what your customers think.
No customers = no money.
9. There’s no such thing as an overnight success.
Every “overnight success” story is actually a story of years of hard work and persistence.
No one became a billionaire in 24 hours.
10. The best decisions don’t often follow rationality.
What do all self-made billionaires have in common? They go against rational and take huge risks.
Huge risks = huge rewards.