In The Self-Made Billionaire Effect, you’ll learn that you have to do something extraordinary to achieve billionaire status. Whether or not your goal is to become a billionaire, to stand out, one of your goals should be to do extraordinary work. In my opinion, extraordinary work is doing work that matters.
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5 Big Ideas: The Self-Made Billionaire Effect
- Do something extraordinary to become a billionaire.
- Self-made billionaires integrate ideas and actions that most individuals and groups keep separate or hold in direct tension to one another. They operate in a world of duality.
- Empathetic Insight + Imagination = Blockbuster Idea: Empathetic Insight allows billionaires to see what customers want and need. Their Imagination allow them to come up with and explore ideas.
- Blockbuster ideas are often steeped in a set of skills or ideas that billionaires are immersed in for years.
- Some ideas are ahead of their time, so while waiting for the right time to execute a blockbuster idea, gain key skills to be ready when the opportunity arrives. Need to do foundational work that’s necessary for your blockbuster idea to succeed.
Have you read?
Zero to One by Peter Thiel, Book Review
Mark Cuban: Entrepreneurial Business and Success Lessons
Initial Thoughts on The Self-Made Billionaire Effect
Published in 2014, The Self-made Billionaire Effect: How Extreme Producers Create Massive Value by John Sviokla and Mitch Cohen gives readers insights into the billionaire mindset. According to the authors, there are two kinds of people, Producers and Performers, which is worth thinking about. I found the first part of the book to be more helpful than the second part.
“John Sviokla and Mitch Cohen decided to look more closely at self-made billionaires because creating $1 billion or more in value is an incredible feat. Drawing on extensive research and interviews, the authors concluded that many of the myths perpetuated about billionaires are simply not true.
These billionaires aren’t necessarily smarter, harder working, or luckier than their peers. They aren’t all prodigies, crossing the billionaire finish line in their twenties. Nor, most of the time, do they create something brand-new: More than 80 percent of the billionaires in the research sample earned their billions in highly competitive industries.” Amazon Description
Definition of Self-Made Billionaires
Self-made billionaires are individuals who create wealth of more than $1 billion through entrepreneurial activities.
What is The Self-made Billionaire Effect About?
What's the difference between a self-made millionaire and the rest of us? It's their mindset. Self-made billionaires have a “Producer” mindset, while most have a “Performer” mindset according to the authors. Below you'll discover the characteristics and differences between the two groups.
Performers and Producers
- Producers: Envisions something new. Bring people together and the resources to create it, then sell to customers who didn’t know they needed it. They operate in a world of duality. Producers have active imagination and sound judgement. Does this remind you of anyone? Steve Jobs comes to mind.
- Performers: Operate modern day organizations, who optimize known systems. They usually have extreme skills in one key area.
To thrive in a changing world, we need both Performers and Producers.
“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.” F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Self-Made Billionaire Effect: 5 Critical Dualities of the Billionaire
- Ideas – Empathetic Imagination: See the big picture. They marry customer wants and needs to imaginative mindset. Come up with and explore new ideas.
- Perspective – Patient Urgency: When bringing product to market, they’re able to work at multiple speeds and time frames, poised to seize opportunities.
- Action – Inventive Execution: Execute ideas with integrative and inventive mindset. This allows producers to design customer experience that unlocks new value.
- Attitude – Taking Relative View of Risk: Perceptions of risk relative – they want to be a part of the future, more than they are afraid of losing what they have. Producers are resilient.
- Leading – Leadership Partnership: How good ideas become great businesses. Producers are not alone. Master Producers bring together divergent ideas and resources into a blockbuster product design and virtuoso Performer who can apply business acumen to optimize design.
Self-Made Billionaire Effect: Producer – Performer Duality
- Producers have the empathetic Imagination that allows them to see the potential for a new idea in the market and they have Inventive Execution necessary for the product to reach the greatest potential.
- Performers have extreme skills in one area.
- Creating billions requires both Thinker/Doer.
- Producer discovers the vital needs in the marketplace and create the business design and sometimes product design to capture details of execution.
- Performers apply virtuoso creativity in operations or marketing, or other areas, to fulfill design’s promise.
- Producers know they need complementary skills to succeed.
- Producers see a market opportunity, attend to details necessary to convert idea into a market reality the customer suddenly cannot live without.
Are you a Producer or a Performer?
If you want to become a self-made billionaire:
- How do you seize opportunities?
- What allows Producers to see what others can’t?
- How do self-made billionaires generate ideas?
Self-made billionaires generate excellent ideas by practicing divergent thinking – free flow of ideas and associations to identify solutions to problems.
Producers Mindset
- Producers blend new opportunities within an old mode.
- Having a blockbuster idea requires real immersion in a subject, real willingness to come up with many ideas, and the ability to suspend judgment of ideas that may seem odd or out there.
- Blockbuster ideas begin with empathy.
- Build products around the customer’s needs.
- Look for opportunities and ideas to capitalize on present and future trends.
- Walk a mile in your customer’s shoes to uncover their irritation.
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Need knowledge and expertise to realize opportunity then act on it.
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Deliberate accumulation of knowledge and experience is acquired through a long-term commitment to a particular topic or subject.
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Blockbuster ideas are often steeped in a set of skills or ideas that billionaires are immersed in for years.
- Be ready when the time is right. Prepare for opportunities:
- While waiting for the right time to execute a blockbuster idea, gain key skills to be ready when the opportunity arrives.
- Need to do foundational work that’s necessary for your blockbuster idea to succeed.
- Patient Time spent waiting for an idea to mature is not the same as idle time.
- Use time as a tool to execute blockbuster ideas.
- Producers are inventive when executing their blockbuster ideas.
- Producers use empathetic imagination to home in on business ideas with large scale potential, but to create blockbuster value requires an inventive approach to bring ideas to market.
- Provide an experience where people enjoy using the product.
- May need to redesign the business model.
- Practice Dealmanship – the selling of an idea – which allows producers to sell products and services they already have, as well as to set up the context and relationships to sell products and services they envision.
- Producers are not willing to risk a change to capture an opportunity. They make a call even if it means losing dearly. They also know the difference between what brings value and what brings only risk.
- Producers are good judges of where the real risk lies.
- Producers able to accept short-term loss for long-term gain.
- Ability to see what’s possible and overcome when things don’t go well.
Business Models/Strategies Worth Thinking About
- Blue Ocean: Companies need to look for a brand-new territory to create huge value.
- Red Ocean: Bloody, battle-ridden markets are challenged by many competitors. Markets are tapped out.
- Purple Ocean: Blending of new approaches within old modes that reveal ways to recreate the space.
Self-made billionaires embrace Purple Ocean strategies to achieve success.
Ideas Worth Thinking about for the Self-Made Billionaire Effect
Skills Needed
- Ability to dream and act.
- Imagine what is possible.
- Design to capture greatest value.
Design Considers
- Strategy and tactics.
- Terms of sale and the deal.
- Ownership and distribution.
- Customer experience.
Final Thoughts on The Self-Made Billionaire Effect
As usual, when reading The Self-Made Billionaire Effect
, I took lots of notes, jotting down ideas that I can use to improve work. I discovered many ideas that can transform the Read the World Extreme Reading Challenge, to make it more relevant to professionals. The big takeaway for me, is to become customer-centric if you expect massive success. When you read The Self-Made Billionaire Effect, you will also glean great ideas that you can immediately apply. However, I’d like to point out that I found the first part of the book more interesting than the second. And that may be that it has more information that I can use.
Next Steps
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UPDATE: First Published November 2016
