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| Howard Hughes had a legendary life. He was also known to be ruthless and hard working. |
I met someone at a business lunch who explained his theory of wealth to me. I'm not saying I believe everything he said but his ideas piqued my curiosity. He began his impromptu lecture by asking, "What do billionaires know that we don't know?" I immediately knew I was in for a long lunch. I only prayed I wasn't about to have lunch with a Mansplainer. Fortunately, he's just a crackpot with a few crazy ideas. But what an entertaining crackpot he turned out to be!
Tom said if I write about him that I have permission to call him a crackpot, so that's his word not mine. Honestly if I had to describe him any other way it might be less flattering.
This is a man who unabashedly shares his thoughts on everything. He's a successful businessman by his own account but he's not a billionaire. His theory of wealth is simple. The truly wealthy, he says, enjoy 1 of only 3 advantages in life.
1. They inherit money and use it to build more wealth.
2. They are ruthless S.O.B.s who seize every opportunity and trample everyone who helps them.
3. They are incredibly lucky and just end up in the right place at the right time.
On that third point someone challenged him. All the billionaires we could think of around the table are intelligent men and women. Even if they inherit their wealth, there is only one moron in the bunch. Okay, that is my opinion of the president. I didn't share it as my sixth sense warned me I might be sitting with some conservatives.
Why does luck enter into it if these people are educated and ambitious?
Tom said that many intelligent, well-educated, and ambitious people fail to achieve the success they hope for. They may derail themselves with addictions. Or perhaps they die before they realize their full potential. Or they may be beaten down by the competition.
But he cited 3 examples of billionaires who would not have become wealthy if opportunity hadn't landed in their laps. One was Bill Gates. Another was Warren Buffett. I don't recall who the third example was but everyone at the table seemed satisfied with it.
Bill Gates may have had some help from his mother but he lucked out by being in the right place at the right time when the PC revolution began.
Warren Buffett lucked out when someone sold him his first pinball machine. What would teenage Warren have done if no one had been willing to part with the equipment?
Both men took advantage of opportunities that came their ways, but they had no control over those opportunities. They happened randomly. Other people in their places would have done about the same. So Tom's theory says.
The Rockefeller family is a prime example of how wealth can pass from generation to generation. If those who inherit the wealth leverage it to create more they succeed. If they squander their resources, as one branch of the Astor family did, then they descend into poverty.
Steve Jobs is considered the ultimate ruthless S.O.B. billionaire. Ever since he died people have come out of the woodwork with stories about how horrible he truly was. They were afraid to talk about him while he was alive. One almost feels sorry for Jobs for sacrificing so much love and other worthwhile things in the pursuit of success. But he was a driven man.
We hold ourselves back for many reasons. We don't want to work 60-80 hours a week. We don't want to hurt other people. We want to share our opportunities. We want to be with our families.
There are a million reasons why people don't become wealthier than they are. It's not just that life has been hard on you. It's that you have made hard choices. If you hesitate to pursue an opportunity, or if you lack the passion you need to carry you through, you'll fail.
It also helps to have a keen sense of how to find the money you need when you need it. Successful young entrepreneurs look for financial backers because they don't have the money they need. They put themselves out there and allow the world to judge them harshly.
And then they dance to whatever tunes their pipers play because all they really want is to succeed and become wealthy. The ruthlessness of the super-rich is oft spun into a tale of evil deeds in movies and books but there is some truth to the idea. Ruthlessness doesn't mean you'll leave the miners to die in the mine while you get out. It could just mean that you refuse to think about the consequences of demanding that everyone work as hard as you do.
If you don't want to be that kind of person (and I don't) then wealth may not be good enough for you. If you are only getting by financially but satisfied with who you are, making no excuses for your own choices, you just may be happier than the men and women who have ruined other people's lives so they can live in mansions and own 30 expensive cars.
"The measure of a man is not in how much wealth he gathers," Tom said, "but in how much his guilt leads him to give back what he took when he was young and ambitious."
If you don't feel guilty enough to want to donate your billions to charity, you're either a heartless bastard or someone who decided there is more to life than money.
