15 Steps to Become a Billionaire (From Scratch)

You are watching the Sunday motivational video, "15 Steps to Become a Billionaire from Scratch." Welcome to a Luxe Calm, the place where future billionaires come to get inspired. Halloway Luxor's and welcome back! This is a very special Sunday motivational video because we are really going to tackle the topic you've already discovered in the title. Yes, you can become a billionaire from scratch.

There are currently over 2,600 billionaires in the world, and that number is growing quickly. Fifty-six percent of all billionaires out there are self-made, meaning they didn't inherit their fortune; instead, they've built lucrative companies that got them to where they are. Now, currently, a new person becomes a billionaire every 36 hours. Why? Mostly because of the internet, access to global markets, the influx of cash in the middle class, and what used to be considered developing countries.

Before you think you've got this in the bag, we have to keep it honest with you and hit you with the truth. There is a reason why only 0.00003 percent of the world's population hits billionaire status. Big factors like education, infrastructure, access to capital, desire, IQ, EQ, and even luck all play major roles in this. Throughout this video, we will analyze the situation where most of these align for you in just the right way. Follow this structure, and even if you fail, you'll still end up a multimillionaire.

With that said, here are the 15 steps to becoming a billionaire from scratch.

Step 1: Start super early. Some people have what is considered to be the entrepreneurial gene. Elon Musk sold his first piece of software when he was 12 years old. Warren Buffett made his first stock investment at the age of 11. At 12 years old, Mark Cuban was selling garbage bags door-to-door. Richard Branson began his first business at 16, and we can go on like this forever. If you don't have a rich father to give you a small loan of 1 million dollars, you'll have to earn your first million yourself. The sooner you start, the bigger the advantage you have because you're learning the most valuable lesson in business: how to get people to give you money.

Think about it like this: It'll take you a couple of years before you identify a business that has a chance of success. Then, with hard work, it'll take roughly seven years for the business to mature. If you start when you're 16, by the time you're 25, money is no longer an issue. If you're a teenager, your time is now. If you're older than that, it just means you have to push yourself harder to make up for the time you wasted.

Step 2: Educate yourself constantly. Books, interviews, documentaries, case studies—analyze other people's businesses. Analyze how other successful people behave and then emulate everything you learned. Fortunately for you, quality information is cheap or even free. Take yourself seriously and invest in books, audiobooks, and anything that builds up your skill set. The quicker you're able to build skills in your inner portfolio, the sooner you'll be able to leverage them to accelerate your growth. In this phase of your life, you need to master the fundamentals: becoming a self-learner, how to self-motivate, self-discipline, time management, sales, how to talk to people, how to build things, how to market, how to scale, how to manage people, how to speak, and understand money. Nobody can take away what you learned. This is why investing in yourself pays the best dividends.

Step 3: Fail quickly but keep moving. You will fail, and this is a fact. You're too early in your journey. You don't have enough knowledge, you don't have the skills, you don't understand the markets or the consumers well enough, and you don't yet have people to guide you or save you. Resilience is key. The only way to become a billionaire, especially when you're starting from scratch, is to absorb as much information as possible and transform it into actionable wisdom. Don't be afraid to fail and do not give up if things don't go your way. Learn, adapt, overcome. Every time you're faced with a challenge, the market is testing your ability to perform. Failure isn't the goal, but it is part of the journey.

Step 4: Sacrifice social life and work 80 to 100 hours per week. We told you we were gonna keep this honest. You simply cannot do both. Building a solid business will require you to put it way above everything else. It'll take so much energy, so much drive, that there simply isn't enough room for anything else. This is the price you have to pay to escape mediocrity. Just like a rocket, you'll have to burn most of your fuel trying to escape the gravitational pull. Working 40-hour weeks is survivable income; it'll keep you fed and warm, but it doesn't bring you that lifestyle you're looking for. The time you put in over that goes toward your success. Relationships, family, and sometimes even health will suffer in the process, and there's still a massive chance you're not going to make it. This is why most people never do; they're not willing to pay this high price, and it's understandable. You can still be like everyone else and be happy; it's your call to make. At the end of the day, this is one of the few things that is 100 percent under your control.

Step 5: Build and grow your first successful business. In the first 10 years, you learned a bunch. You studied success in many forms; you understand how the market is changing. Inevitably, you've identified businesses that are within your reach and took the idea to the market. Initially, you put a lot of work in yourself. Then you started bringing people in. Money begins to flow, and you start making moves. You test different strategies, different products; some work, some don't. You learn from them. The years go by like a roller coaster. You're either having the best year of your life or you're thinking about quitting. Every successful entrepreneur knows this feeling all too well, yet you push through and half a decade later, you're doing okay. The temptation to spoil yourself is stronger than ever, but remain disciplined. You reinvest almost everything into the business, and it continues to grow. You have a good understanding of how big this can get and what needs to be done to get you there. You have successfully matured yourself as a business person.

Step 6: Leverage your newfound success to meet influential people. On the road to success, you've met several people who share the same drive or same motivations as you. They're going through their own things, but you share a sense of brotherhood because everyone goes through more or less the same struggles. These are the only people who, to some degree, understand you, and they become your network. Some of them will become future business partners; others will be your mentors, and some will open doors you've never seen before. The power of this network is massive. They will help you navigate life. They have contacts of their own; they've made mistakes of their own, and the same as you, they're more than open to share with the group. You might have heard the term "mastermind" before; it's when smart minds come together to help each other solve creative problems. Only in business, the payoff is more monetary. The network you build around you will determine how quickly you move through these wealth levels.

Step 7: Sell your first business; become a multimillionaire. You started with almost nothing. You've put in years, sweat, and tears into the business that's now quite valuable. It's time to let it go. It's incredibly rare for people to achieve billionaire status from their first few businesses, even in the technology space. In order to tackle big issues, you need money, and you need people to trust you enough to give you that money. Selling your first business is like building a past performance portfolio. It shows people that you can take an idea and execute it flawlessly until completion. If you did everything right, a seven-figure payout should be within reach. Every day, 1,700 people become millionaires in the United States. If geography previously played a decisive role in your success, as of 2020, you can no longer use that as an excuse. A laptop and an internet connection is the minimum barrier of entry in this race, and considering you're consuming this piece of content right now, you're way past it. Here's the deal: a million dollars is no longer a lot of money; it's just a mental milestone you need to pass in order to move into the real money territory. You have to enter this stage as quickly and as legally as possible. At this point, can you finally start your race to one billion?

Step 8: Build a new, innovative, disrupting business. As you move into this new level of business, you'll discover things are quite different. The stakes are higher, and you're now competing with the big boys. They have all the money in the world, they have the infrastructure, and you're just a cockroach who's trying to take some of their bread crumbs. But because you have your network, you have your track record; you now have access to other people's money. The only way to compete with the big boys is to be creative. You can't challenge them head-on because they can bury you. You can't do it cheaper, and you don't have access to the same resources as they do. Your best bet is to leverage your creativity and the latest technology available. Statistically speaking, big business isn't as agile or as quick to adopt new tech; this is your window of opportunity. Plus, they're stuck in an old way of doing things because it worked for them for so long. Quick reminder: Airbnb wasn't invented by Hilton or Marriott; it solved a problem but in a new, more efficient way, leveraging modern-day technology. There's a video on our channel called "15 Problems to Solve If You Want to Be a Billionaire." You can check it out by clicking in the top right corner.

Step 9: Expand quickly and aggressively. The moment you prove your solution works, the race begins. It's a race between you and how much of the market you can acquire before big business catches up. This is why Elon is so aggressive with his electric cars. Volkswagen and Ford are breathing down his neck, so he needs to secure his position as a big player before they retrofit their production line. This first mover advantage applies to every industry, and it's usually driven by social and technology change. This model is simple: prove the solution works, expand in new geographies, and use the money to come up with new solutions. This is usually where businesses raise a second round of investment at a massive valuation that allows them to really have an impact, and based on the goals of the founder, we are faced with the following choice.

Step 10: Either get acquired or try to build a monopoly in your niche. The big boys are interested in what you've built, so they're offering to buy you out. This is where Facebook pays one billion dollars for Instagram or 19 billion dollars for WhatsApp. Again, this applies to every other industry as well. The moment you start making waves, they start doing the math. It's your choice if you want to sell or if you plan on beating them at the business game. But you should know they will come after you with everything they've got. Look at Snapchat turning down three billion dollars from Facebook because they wanted to be the next Facebook. If you go with the second route, execution is your only option. Yahoo had the option to buy Google two times but failed to do so; the first time for one million dollars in 1998, the second time for three billion in 2002. But because of their ability to execute, Google is now worth almost 1 trillion dollars.

So how do you become a monopoly in your niche? One: you buy out your competitors. That's why every mammoth out there is on a shopping spree right now, from big tech companies to fashion retailers; everybody is buying. Your second option: make your competitors redundant. This is done either through economies of scale, where they can't compete in pricing, meaning you simply can't produce the same product cheaper than I can, or through technological innovation. Like if you're the iPhone to the BlackBerry, or if you remove their competitive advantage the same way Facebook's Insta Stories did with Snapchat.

Step 11: Focus on big ideas that impact a lot of people. In order to build a multi-billion dollar business, your product or service will need to impact a lot of people. That's just the facts. The top 5 industries with the most billionaires are as follows: finance and investments, fashion and retail, real estate, manufacturing, and technology. Basically, these are the industries that create everything you touch, use, or where they shape reality. They build your cities; they finance the companies building the cities, creating your clothes, the items you use, and the digital services required to live a normal life. Five billion people have a mobile phone. They all paid for their devices; they all use them to access the Internet.

At the end of the day, making a billion dollars is a rather simple math problem. How can you extract one dollar from a billion people, or how can you take 100 dollars from ten million people, or ten thousand dollars from only one hundred thousand people? See where we're going with this. As the general population gets richer, you'll see prices steadily go up. The best indicators are the costs of homes and smartphones.

Step 12: Invest in R&D and hire the best talent money can buy. Staying relevant in the big boys' game is incredibly difficult because there's always a new innovative company coming for what you have. While you're busy holding your own versus your direct competitors, the only way to keep yourself ahead of everyone else is to innovate. You've heard the term before, but what does it really mean? Innovation is the ability to connect the dots of reality in a never-before-seen way that adds value. You can innovate in many ways: take a concept that works in another industry and adapt it to your own; innovate in design, in experience, or come up with something the world didn't know it needed. The light bulb didn't come as a result of incrementally improving the candle. A company is only as good as the people who push it forward, and you need all the help you can get.

Step 13: Go after the big bucks. Remember the billion-dollar math we did earlier? Here's a super valuable piece of advice: go where the money is. If you're gonna work anyway, why wouldn't you go after the big piles of money? A great example of everything we mentioned today is a company by the name UiPath. They're building the AI bots that are doing repetitive tasks for companies. Take a moment to think about it: how many accountants are there in the world? What is their economic value? How much is your company paying the entire accounting machine, from clerks to invoice management to data entry, and so on? Solve this problem once, and then you take it to every big player who needs your solution. Write this down: a transaction happens when the price paid is lower than the perceived value. As long as you understand this, you'll make money. If humans are costing a bank 100 million dollars per year, and you offer a solution that does the same job for half the cost, congratulations, you just earned yourself a contract. UiPath went from 1 million to 100 million dollars in yearly recurring revenue in less than two years. The company is now worth over seven billion dollars and growing quickly. What's the fundamental way they did it? They solved a problem for the people who have the means to pay for it.

Step 14: Secure your wealth. Diversify. Assuming everything has worked out in your favor, you're now finally rolling in the money. Your shares in the company are worth a lot; you're trending, people are looking up to you. It's time to start taking money out and securing your wealth. Invest in what you understand: buy land, real estate, art, shares, and other companies—anything that's long-term. Congratulations, because you've made it! You're no longer just a paper billionaire. The moment your solid assets surpass 1 billion dollars, you've secured your position as a billionaire. Your wealth is increasing so much every year that you no longer know what to do with the excess capital you have. You can start foundations or help charities change the world for the better. You can divert some of the money your investments are generating to research or whatever you feel passionate about. You're surrounded by the right people who make sure you get every deductible possible, so the wealth is secured. Now it's up to you what you want to do next.

Step 15: Bankroll super business-savvy individuals or do it all over again. Remember when you had all those creative ideas before you managed to conquer the world? Find people with the same spark you had in yourself and help them do the same. That's what venture capital funds are all about. They're the driving force behind the change agents that are shaping the world. Governments have fallen way behind on innovation, and at this moment in time, the private sector is what's pushing humanity into the future. If you still believe you have what it takes, do it yourself. Dream bigger than you've ever dreamt before. You want to cure the world of diseases like Bill Gates is doing? Do that! You want to mine for asteroids? Go do it! You want to solve immortality? Give it a shot! Take 1 million people to form a colony on Mars? Why not! We need billionaires who have the resources and the vision to push humanity to the next phase. We are reaching unprecedented levels of wealth and innovation ability. Humanity, as we know it, is on the brink of evolution. You can either be a driving factor or just an observer.

If you look at almost every self-made billionaire on the Forbes list, you'll find almost all of them follow this exact framework we've described for you. And Al Xers, looking back on what it takes to build this kind of wealth, do you think the sacrifices are worth it? We're really interested to hear from you in the comments; you know we really do read them. Test it out, and as a thank you for watching this year's second last Sunday motivational video, you're of course getting a bonus bit of information: the billionaire lifestyle only requires 15 to 50 million dollars. Everyone wants to be a billionaire because it's a round number; it's the equivalent of a lot of money. But at that stage, your wealth is just a number on a screen. What most people really want is what comes with the idea of never having to worry about money again. Instead of billionaire status, we recommend you set a realistic goal of becoming a high net worth individual. These people have a fortune between 15 and 50 million dollars. If you're smart, that's more than enough to feel secure and enjoy a rich lifestyle. No, you won't have to own private jets, but you're super comfortable renting one whenever you need. You have solid investments that are covering every reasonable expense, and you're still left with more. If you choose to, you can stop working for the rest of your life, and it would be fine.

We know you dream of retiring on a beach, sipping mojitos, but surprisingly it gets boring really fast, especially if you're the type of person who's built their fortune from the ground up. You can never really stop your mind from being what it truly is, the mind of an entrepreneur. Only this time, you're solving business problems just for the challenge of it all. That's what we wish for all of you: to become so rich you solve problems just for fun.

It's been a crazy year, Al Xers, and we could have only imagined such a thriving community when we began this journey. If you've watched this video up until this point, please write "Billy" in the comments; that way we know which of you is on their way to getting that billionaire lifestyle. Thank you for spending some time with us, Al Xers. Make sure to subscribe so you never miss another video. We also hand-picked these videos for you to watch next. As always, the conversation continues on social media. Thanks again, and we can't wait to have you back tomorrow!