How to be a Billionaire: Proven Strategies from the Titans of Wealth [Paperback]

Martin S. Fridson CFA (Author), Martin S. Fridson (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0471416177 | ISBN-13: 978-0471416173 | Publication Date: May 1, 2001 | Edition: 1

"A truly enlightening work filled with fundamental strategies that have worked for others.Martin Fridson documents the essential principles inherent in every billionaire's success."

-Gordon Bethune
Chairman of the Board and CEO
Continental Airlines

Self-made billionaires all have one thing in common: they excel at making money. But hard work, thrift, and focus are only part of the story-you hold the rest of it in your hands. How to Be a Billionaire is the first comprehensive picture of the real strategies and tactics that built the great business fortunes of modern times. Packed with engaging accounts of titans like Ross Perot, Richard Branson, Phil Anschutz, John D. Rockefeller, Wayne Huizenga, Bill Gates, J. Paul Getty, and Kirk Kerkorian, How to Be a Billionaire will show you principles that can increase your wealth and business acumen to the mogul level.

How to Be a Billionaire looks at the careers, the methods, and the minds of self-made billionaires to distill the common keys to titanic accumulations of wealth. Each chapter explores a specific strategy and brings it to life through extended profiles of past and present masters of the art of making money.

Do you think innovation is the best way to prosper in business? Sam Walton, founder of the Wal-Mart retail chain, would tell you otherwise. The key to Walton's success was supreme devotion to copying the methods of other successful discounters.

What could be less complicated than buying low and selling high? But the ascent of

Warren Buffett, John Kluge, and Laurence Tisch to billionaire status depended on much more than an eye for good bargains. And if you're looking to thrive by outmanaging the competition, look no further than Richard Branson. When the founder of Virgin Atlantic needed to reduce his staff by 400 people, 600 volunteered to take off a few months on sabbatical.

How to Be a Billionaire identifies the methods, beliefs, and behaviors every businessperson must understand and emulate to reach the pinnacle of riches. A manual for success that can benefit every aspiring tycoon, it is a fascinating read for anyone intrigued by wealth and how it's gotten.

Praise for HOW TO BE A BILLIONAIRE

"How to Be a Billionaire offers fascinating insight into the subject of building wealth. As a result of his exhaustive research, Martin Fridson is able to explain the wealth-creation process from a unique perspective. As the reader will discover, there is no single formula for success, but there are certain categories into which these concepts can be placed. My personal advice is to remember the words of Winston Churchill who said, 'Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.'"

-Ross Perot

"Martin Fridson has created the ultimate roadmap to the American Dream. He comes as close to extracting a formula for the acquisition of wealth as any book I have ever read."

-Jeff Sagansky
CEO, Paxson Communications

"Martin Fridson's book has a number of very insightful and thoughtful analyses, something you don't pick up in many business schools."

-Philip F. Anschutz
Chairman and CEO, The Anschutz Corporation

"How to Be a Billionaire is a powerful arsenal of dead-on strategies for increasing your personal wealth and business acumen. Marty Fridson details the tactics of self-made billionaires with great intelligence and insight. I wish this book had been available when I was starting my career."

-Spencer Hays
Founder, Tom James Company
Executive Chairman, Southwestern/Great American, Inc.
Chairman, Athlon Publications

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Forget Regis Philbin's Who Wants to be a Millionaire. Martin Fridson's How to Be a Billionaire sets its sights much higher, and therefore seems an even more appropriate (if somewhat less realistic) goal for today's tycoon wannabes. There are some 200 individuals in the U.S. alone who now breathe this rarefied air, writes Merrill Lynch managing director Fridson, and no reason why those who adopt their philosophies cannot join them. To that end, he studied more than a dozen of the self-made super-rich, including Sam Walton, Bill Gates, Wayne Huizenga, and Warren Buffett. He then synthesized their techniques for success into nine strategies: take monumental risks, do business in new ways, dominate your market, consolidate an industry, buy low, thrive on deals, outmanage the competition, invest in political influence, and resist unions. Dividing profiles of these high fliers into chapters focused on their prevailing principles, he shows how each played a critical role in the growth of an empire. Walton didn't invent discounting, for example; he tweaked existing practices for the late-20th-century marketplace. Likewise, Huizenga didn't start individual companies but integrated existing competitors into powerhouse organizations. While Billionaire may not be a true self-help manual, it does offer a fascinating glimpse at tactics used by those who've played the game and won. --Howard Rothman --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

"How to Be a Billionaire offers fascinating insight into the subject of building wealth. As a result of his exhaustive research, Martin Fridson is able to explain the wealth-creation process from a unique perspective. As the reader will discover, there is no single formula for success, but there are certain categories into which these concepts can be placed. My personal advice is to remember the words of Winston Churchill who said, 'Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.'" -Ross Perot "Martin Fridson has created the ultimate roadmap to the American Dream. He comes as close to extracting a formula for the acquisition of wealth as any book I have ever read." -Jeff Sagansky CEO, Paxson Communications "Martin Fridson's book has a number of very insightful and thoughtful analyses, something you don't pick up in many business schools." -Philip F. Anschutz Chairman and CEO, The Anschutz Corporation "How to Be a Billionaire is a powerful arsenal of dead-on strategies for increasing your personal wealth and business acumen. Marty Fridson details the tactics of self-made billionaires with great intelligence and insight. I wish this book had been available when I was starting my career." -Spencer Hays Founder, Tom James Company Executive Chairman, Southwestern/Great American, Inc. Chairman, Athlon Publications

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (May 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0471416177
• ISBN-13: 978-0471416173
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (36 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #242,565 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

31 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Business, not Lightening, January 12, 2000

By 

H. VONCARP (New York) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: How to be a Billionaire: Proven Strategies from the Titans of Wealth (Hardcover)

Contrary to its title, this painstakingly researched and entertaining book does not belong to the genre of financial self-help. Rather, it chronicals the business successes (and some failures) of a group of self-made billionaires. It is not celebrity biography, either, which tends to treat these individuals as pure anomolies, as if their wealth descended from heaven on lightening bolts. Rather, Fridson explores the histories the ultra-successful as actions of extraordinary businessmen operating in the ordinary economy. This brings their achievements to human scale and provides useable lessons for would-be billionaires, even if some of the advice seems toung-in-cheek ("dominate your market" - If I knew how to do that ....) Perhaps it is self-help, after all.

31 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A bold book. Strategies. Principles. Lives of Billionaires., April 7, 2003

By 

Harinath Thummalapalli (Austin, TX United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: How to be a Billionaire: Proven Strategies from the Titans of Wealth (Hardcover)

Imagine having the courage to write a book that is aimed at budding entrepreneurs who want to be billionaires. Millionaires, sure. But billionaires? How many of us would be willing to even discuss with our friends the thought of giving it a shot by taking a systematic approach to making billions? It is fascinating that someone would seriously spend that much time researching the strategies that were purportedly used by billionaires like Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Ross Perot, etc. Even more amazing that they would write a book about it. That alone convinced me to buy the book. Okay, I also got it during the after-christmas sale at amazon.com for 70% off, but frugality is one of the key principles followed by the billionaires.

When you start reading the book, you realize that the author is very serious about teaching you how to be a billionaire if that is your goal. The book follows this format - the first chapter which is 28 pages long is definitely worth reading multiple times. It introduces the concept of 'Overcoming the Levelers' which in this day and age are the 'Menace of Competition' and the 'Obstacle of Social Conventions' and some ideas to overcome these. This chapter also talks about the obvious and not so obvious paths that have NOT been taken by billionaires, like 'playing the stock market' or 'salary'. The different key principles shared by the billionaires along with some of the strategies they followed are briefly described. Most importantly, this chapter provides some very deep insights into how these very successful people did it.

The rest of the book goes into the 9 different strategies that were employed by the billionaires in reaching their current position. This is a fascinating journey into the details of how they became so successful. There are also a couple of important chapters on choosing the right industry and some tidbits for the readers who are putting their own plans together. For those of us who spend a lot of time staying on top of the world financial news and trying to figure out how certain mergers end up in 'the whole is more than the sum of the parts' situation will find this book a treat. There are examples of these mergers where the author explains the theories behind high stock valuations. And it is all a very easy read. I have been unsuccessfully tyring to figure this out on and off for about 3 years and this book helped me understand this concept in just a few minutes.

As the authors rightly point out, a lot of people on the planet are very interested in making enormous sums of money - as witnessed by the popularity of state lotteries across the country and the world. Of course, most of us don't aspire to actually make this the central focus of our lives (lottery addicts excluded) for good reasons - lack of information on how to do it being the number 1 reason. There may be more certainty in taking the path to become a sports star, movie star or earn a doctorate than in making enormous sums of money. It just isn't clear how one can do it. That is obviously why there are so few billionaires in the world.

But this book is a fascinating read that can help you decide whether to really pursue this dream or set less lofty goals (like making enough money for a comfortable retirement) and stop trying to convince your spouse that you are going to become a billionaire some day, if only the economy would turn around or if only someone would give you a chance or if only ... This book has been helping me set clearer targets for myself by coming to terms with the fact that it is an almost impossible task to make that kind of money from nothing. Instead, it has helped me define a path and set a goal that is in tune with my own capabilities.

Get a copy of this book and read it cover to cover if spend more than 2 hours a week talking to friends about making a lot of money. I wish you the best of luck with this very important pursuit!

30 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Book....How timely!, January 6, 2000

By 

Ian Smith (Atlanta, Georgia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: How to be a Billionaire: Proven Strategies from the Titans of Wealth (Hardcover)

Nowadays being a millionaire is much like being well dressed at the prom: "you look good but you're not really special." Billionaires however have attained a level of wealth that truly sets them apart. "How to be a Billionaire" recognizes this and masterfully tells the story of today's most famous titans of wealth such as Bill Gates, Ross Perot and older money like H.L. Hunt and John D. Rockfeller. The Book is organized along priniciples such as "Copy don't Innovate" and utilizes the highly specific examples of wealthy industrialists like Gates to clearly explain these kernels of wisdom. Great Book. Read Think and Grow Rich if you want motivation and to feel empowered. But if you want to make "Billions" read this book.