The Principles of Success: Lessons from Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffett

By Oliver Wright

Discover essential lessons for success from some of the wealthiest men in the modern world.

 

Do you want to improve your life, achieve financial freedom, and never have to worry about money again? Then it's time to learn from the masters.

 

This book uncovers the philosophies and mindsets of three of the world's most incredible entrepreneurs – Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, Warren Buffett, the legendary investor, and Elon Musk, head of SpaceX and Tesla. All of these men have essential life lessons which have allowed them to climb to incredible wealth – and now you can learn them.

 

From understanding why you should surround yourself with the right people to knowing when and how to take risks, The Principles of Success is your guidebook to a more financially stable life!

 

Inside this book, you'll discover:

• Why You Should Find Your Passion
• Why the Right People Can Make (Or Break) Your Success
• The Secret of Optimism – Why Being Positive is so Important
• How to Deal With Risks, Setbacks, and Obstacles
• Why Nothing is a Replacement for Hard Work and Effort
• How to Keep Learning no Matter How Old You Are
• And So Much More!

 

All of these lessons have been instrumental in business success, and by mastering them you too can supercharge your chances of fulfilling your entrepreneurial dream! So don't waste time learning through trial and error – study the experts, and discover how you could someday join them.

 

Buy now to discover the principles of success today!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Oliver Wright
• Release date: May 17, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393354673

Book preview

The Principles of Success

Lessons from Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffett

––––––––

By Oliver Wright

© Copyright 2019 - All rights reserved.

The content contained within this book may not be reproduced, duplicated or transmitted without direct written permission from the author or the publisher.

Under no circumstances will any blame or legal responsibility be held against the publisher, or author, for any damages, reparation, or monetary loss due to the information contained within this book, either directly or indirectly.

Legal Notice:

This book is copyright protected. It is only for personal use. You cannot amend, distribute, sell, use, quote or paraphrase any part, or the content within this book, without the consent of the author or publisher.

Disclaimer Notice:

Please note the information contained within this document is for educational and entertainment purposes only. All effort has been executed to present accurate, up to date, reliable, complete information. No warranties of any kind are declared or implied. Readers acknowledge that the author is not engaging in the rendering of legal, financial, medical or professional advice. The content within this book has been derived from various sources. Please consult a licensed professional before attempting any techniques outlined in this book.

By reading this document, the reader agrees that under no circumstances is the author responsible for any losses, direct or indirect, that are incurred as a result of the use of information contained within this document, including, but not limited to, errors, omissions, or inaccuracies.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1: Start Early

Peer Pressure

Financial Pressure

Tech Adoption

Risk Taking

Energy

Chapter 2: Find Your Passion

Concentration

Expansion

Joy and Connection

Confidence

Feel Good

Chapter 3: Work With the Right People

The Worker

Positivity

Dreamers

Curiosity

Integrity

Chapter 4: Always Be Learning

Obsolescence

Economic Benefits

Physical Benefits

Dealing With Change

Spiritual Effects

Chapter 5: Think for Yourself

Don’t Always Go With the Flow

Don’t Worry About Impressing Others

Enforce Rationality

Understand True Risk

Accept and Understand Failure

Chapter 6: Do the Work

Imaginary Pressure

Commitment to Craft

Competition

Chapter 7: Have an Edge

Marginal Improvement

Process Based Edge

Disruptive Edge

Chapter 8: Be Creative

Schedule It

Get Bored

Approach Things Unexpectedly

Try Something New

Chapter 9: Be Optimistic

Optimism Generates New Ideas

Optimism Pushes You to Act

Optimism Supports Persistence

Optimism Helps You Bounce Back

Chapter 10: Understand Risk

Reward for Risk

Chaotic Systems

Mindset

Chapter 11: Model Success

Fearlessness

Lessons

Rationality

Conclusion

References

Introduction

Success is often an elusive thing. Lots of people around the world chase it and undertake all sorts of stunts to achieve it. Some even cross legal and ethical barriers in an attempt to reach it. The problem with achieving success is that it means many different things to different people.

A lot of self-help literature is concerned with defining what success really is. Is it happiness? Money? Peace? It ultimately depends on the individual. This book is not about defining what success is. Instead, we’ll be taking a look at the best examples of success in order to try to figure out what success means to you.

The environment you place yourself in is extremely important. Studies have shown that we are the sum of the five people we spend the most time with (Antonopoulos, 2016). If you spend time with people who you feel are unsuccessful, then guess how your life is going to turn out.

Spending time is a bit of a misguided phrase here. Back in the old days, you had to know someone personally in order to spend time with them. The only media you could consume was a video tape, a book, or a newspaper. Sure, you could read great books and biographies to get a feel for a person, but it wasn’t the real thing.

The world today is a very different place from back then. Thanks to the magic of the internet, it has never been easier to access information and to get a feel for how a successful person thinks. Information has no barriers, and distilling all of their qualities into a framework is an easy thing to do.

While it might be easy to form a framework, it isn’t easy to replicate what they have done by any means. If it was, there wouldn’t be much success in it. Either way, thanks to the power of blogs, YouTube, and media interviews, all that remains for us to do is to pick the right people to spend the most time with.

With all due respect to your uncle Jim, in my opinion, the three best people to emulate are Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, and Elon Musk. All three of them are vastly different men, and yet there are intersections between them, mostly through Gates as it happens.

Buffett and Gates happen to be best friends, and each man has had a monumental impact on the other’s life. This is despite the huge age gap that exists between the two. Gates is an integral part, some might even say founding father, of the tech industry in America, and it was his success that fueled the rise of the Silicon Valley startup culture that paved the way for Elon Musk.

Musk is a new age entrepreneur and is a very different beast from the other two. He talks about killer robots and believes that the movie The Matrix was a documentary (Wall, 2018). He’s busy planning to send people to Mars and the moon, and at first glance he doesn’t seem to fit in the same category as the other two.

The fact is that Musk’s thought process actually has a lot in common with Buffet’s. Musk relies on analyzing information through what he calls ‘first principles,’ which are simply ‘mental models,’ as Buffett's business partner, Charlie Munger, calls them.

These models are thought processes by which you reduce the complexity of your world and increase your competitive advantage. Buffett, via Munger’s words, and Musk are the only people who have mentioned the existence of thought processes and functions as being critical to their success.

While the models both men use are different, with Musk even going so far as to criticize one of Buffet’s dearly held ideas, the fact is that both of them share similar principles and approaches (Moynihan, 2019). This is despite the fact that Buffett is about as tech averse as a person can be, and Musk is all for adopting it.

Bill Gates is unique amongst the three men because of his approach to life and business. When running Microsoft, he was one of the most cut-throat businessmen out there, focusing on relentlessly increasing Microsoft’s perceived value and market share. Gates often paid special attention to the company’s stock price (something that Buffett and Musk disdained) and engineered Microsoft’s reports so that its earnings were always a few cents above analyst projections.

This kept the stock price up and ensured an advantage, depending on what Gates’ plans were. Once he retired from Microsoft though, instead of using his money to buy Bangladesh, he decided to set up the world’s largest and most influential charitable organization (Klara, 2016).

What Google did for online searching, The Gates Foundation has done for charity and philanthropy. It has funded numerous projects around the world and has had more per capita impact than any other organization of its kind by a long shot.

Gates’ vision and commitment was so strong that he managed to get Buffett to donate almost all of his wealth to charity. Buffett, in his early career, was never known for it, to the extent that his kids had no idea how wealthy their family was (Schroeder, 2009).

While Musk isn't as evangelistic about altruism, his foundation nonetheless focuses on causes dear to him. In typical Musk fashion, some of them are incongruous while others are more stereotypical (Harris, 2019). However, Gates remains the only person amongst the three who has made charity his life’s work, which is saying a lot for a man who built Microsoft.

This book is an attempt to distill the values of these three diverse men into a framework that you can adopt in your life. Are you guaranteed success by following this? Well, if success were as simple as memorizing a few lines of text, we’d all be millionaires.

As with everything, you need to work. However, these principles will make it easy for you to move past some of the usual problems that every person faces on the road to success. Using these mental models and attitudes, you will make better decisions and will see better results.

Most importantly, it will help you stay away from making the wrong decisions that will derail you from your path. The importance of virtues like patience, diversification, and risk will be extremely apparent to you as you progress through this book.

A common question most people might have at this point is whether you need to know the ins and outs of each person’s life. Not really. As long as you’re aware of who these men are and which companies or field of work they operate in, this is more than enough. I’ve done the heavy lifting for you, and you will learn about some of the lessons they’ve learned via anecdotes and stories.

Lastly, in what might seem like counterintuitive advice, don’t take these men at their word. Sure, they’re incredibly successful by all worldly standards, but ultimately, you’re you. Some principles will resonate with you, but others might seem a bit foolish. This is fine.

After all, there isn’t just one way to be successful in life. These three men are evidence that various approaches work. While the basic framework applies to all of them, the details differ. This is how it should be. So, remember this fact and do not be in a rush to adopt and implement every bit of the advice you read in this book.

Think for yourself and develop your own mental models. Once you begin thinking right, success will surely follow. So, with all of that said, let’s jump into the first principle.

Chapter 1: Start Early

The early bird gets the worm. Smart alecks will point out that this state of things is great for the bird but doesn’t seem ideal for the worm. How important is it to be early anyway?

While some people are night owls and prefer to reverse their daily clocks, the fact is that when it comes to life, it is far better to start early than late. This is simple logic. After all, time is the one commodity we cannot gain—unless Musk manages to create a time machine.

You only lose time and therefore, the earlier you begin, the better your odds are of achieving success in any field you choose. The soundness of this principle is best illustrated by all three of our models in this book.

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