The Seed Capital for Startups Blog

Billionaire How-to Strategies

Billionaire Business Strategies Course

M&A deal-making is still the surest and fastest way to tycoon status.

When I announced the new course on how to utilize billionaire growth strategies , I received emails from people complaining that I had set the candidate qualifications too high. After mulling it over for a couple of weeks, I have decided to revise the standards to allow people in who have a burning desire to learn advanced business strategies. There will now be two levels of participation available to suit all budgets and qualification levels.

Once again, this is a course on advanced entrepreneurship and entry level M&A. It's not about real estate or building one company endlessly via sales growth (e.g., the Microsoft model). It's a deal-maker course at heart.

Think Kirk Kerkorian, Daniel Ludwig, Richard Branson, Ted Turner, and not Sergey Brin & Larry Page.

If you're serious about this program  click here for additional info.

The Best Billionaire How-to Book

Today we continue with our series on how billionaires become billionaires, and I have some good news for those of you with an interest in the matter. A couple of weeks ago I stumbled across a how-to book on this very topic and am just now finishing it off now.  It's been a very enjoyable read for a student of business history such as myself. The book is Martin S. Fridson's How to be a Billionaire: Proven Strategies from the Titans of Wealth. Indeed, if you can only read one book on how billionaires build their empires, let it be this one.

Up until the discovery of this book, I found myself forced to recommend a good half-dozen biographies and histories of the Robber Barons for those determined enough to read through thousands of pages in an effort to glean the business strategies of these extraordinary men. (See my billionaire reading list along the left margin of this blog.) My two top recommendations to date have been Matthew Josephson's The Robber Barons and Om Malik's Broadbandits, or "Robber Barons Part II" as I like to call it. Now I add Fridson's book to cap the ultimate billionaire how-to trilogy.

Fridson's book is the one to start off with in your study of billionaire business strategies. It's an excellent distillation of the main wealth building strategies of tycoons over the last 140 years. Think of it as offering the "30,000 foot" view of their strategies. The other two books will then add additional layers of detail with their chapters on individual tycoons. If you wish to continue your studies after completing all three books, my recommendation is to go with biographies of men such as John D. Rockefeller, E.H. Harriman, J.P. Morgan, Jay Gould, Daniel Ludwig,  Richard Branson, Ted Turner, etc.  Don't be tempted to focus on just current billionaires because the business lessons taught by the first wave of Robber Barons are just as relevant today as they were in the last third of the 19th century. Only the technology has changed from the telegraph to email.

A word of warning about all of these titles:

The problem with these books is that if the reader isn't well-versed in business strategy and finance, many of the lessons contained in them will be missed. You really do have to be able to read between the lines in order to fully grasp what is often explained only in short-hand by the authors.  This is particularly true of the many sections dealing with the use and manipulation of publicly traded companies.  I make this point because a number of Amazon reviewers complain about Fridson's book not being as helpful as, say, Think & Grow Rich. (Groan)

Make no mistake, this is a serious business text and not a fluffy get-rich-quick tome.

Billionaire Course: How Billionaires Do It

Billionaire Deal-maker Training Program

"Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars."  ~ Les Brown 

Are you ready to take your business to the next level? What's the next level after you have succeeded as an entrepreneur? It's adopting billionaire strategies for maximum business growth and wealth creation. Self-made billionaires rely on a small number of proven strategies to achieve both goals. By learning and using them, you will dramatically accelerate your progress in business. 

Topics to be covered:

-Finding Your Personal Sweet-spot

-What It Takes to Achieve Billionaire Status

-How to Spot Industries Offering the Best Opportunities for Rapid Wealth Accumulation

-The Most Important Billionaire Asset and How to Acquire It

-Billionaire Wealth Building Strategies

-The Art of Successful Negotiating

-How to Buy Companies

-How to Sell Companies

Course materials: will include a third party book which will serve as the course textbook. The course will then fill in the details and provide actionable items to ensure that students are making progress.  Personal consultations may be available over the telephone.

What this course is not: it's not about being a passive investor of any kind, it's not about real estate, or any get-rich-quick m-l-m type scheme. It's also not a course focused exclusively on the Net.

What this course is: this is about entry level M&A activity.

Ideal candidates: entrepreneurs with proven track records, fast learners, individuals with C-level experience with a burning desire to succeed in business.  Not everyone who applies will be accepted. I'm looking for people who have a realistic chance of benefiting from this course and qualifying for admission into a private network of deal-makers.

Duration: Approximately 2 to 3 months, depending on your rate of progress. You should be able to allocate a minimum of 4 to 5 hours per week to this project. Obviously, the more time you put into it the better for you.

Course Fees: t/b/d. However, it's not going to be free. As they say, you get what you pay for in life.

If you're serious about this program  Email Me for additional info. Please take a day to think about your level of commitment before contacting me for details. Are you really prepared to invest time and money into this?

If you are just thinking about entrepreneurship at this point in your life, this course will most likely be over your head. Learn to walk before you try running. Your best bet is to invest in my Smart Startup Guide which will teach you the financing and startup secrets of the elite Inc 500 entrepreneurs.

 

How to Be a Billionaire

Just a quick sunny Saturday morning post before I go out.

Blogger Half Sigma has a post titled Who Wants to be a Billionaire? which contains some mildly interesting data on billionaires. Unfortunately it has little information on the self-made variety and nothing on how they did it. (The discussion that follows it quickly deteriorates into an argument about what type of job one should get. )

There's a graphic at the NYT's site on The Wealthiest Americans Ever which lists the 30 wealthiest billionaires in our nation's history. John D. Rockefeller tops the list. Men like Getty and Hunt didn't make the cut. It's too bad that they didn't include non-Americans as well such as the Rothschilds.

Billionaire Strategies

Stay tuned for a series on the strategies employed by the self-made to become billionaires. You don't need to aspire to be a billionaire to find these business lessons highly relevant. As they say, if you shoot for the stars at the very least you will hit the moon. Check out the articles that are already posted.