Editor’s note: This article was first published in January 2017. It uses 2015 figures, including 1,826 billionaires and a world population of 7.3 billion, and describes Pablo Isla as Amancio Ortega’s delegate at Inditex; he stepped down as chairman in 2022.
If we ask what the secret of success is, the most common answer we usually get is: have a goal, draw up a plan to achieve it, work hard, persist, learn from the failures you meet along the way and keep persisting, plus a bit of luck. And of course, on top of all that, you need a good idea.
And it’s true. Nobody can say that these traits aren’t necessary for success, but they are probably not enough.
(See: 25 habits of successful people)
In 2015 there were 1,826 billionaires in the world. At that time the world’s population was 7.3 billion, so the probability that someone born anywhere in the world becomes a billionaire is 0.000025%. Put that way, it is a probability similar to winning the lottery.
But we can’t say that these billionaires got there purely by chance. Nor can we say it is because they work hard, since they don’t work harder than someone laying bricks on a building site 14 hours a day.
Over the last few years, after reading dozens of books and biographies of businesspeople and other books about success, we could probably cover, if not all, at least some of those secrets (which aren’t really secrets) that we sometimes don’t stop to think about.
1. The back doors.
People often say there are no shortcuts to success. But that isn’t entirely true. In fact, I think we misunderstand the meaning of a “shortcut to success”. A shortcut is, for example, finding a good mentor, or going straight to the spring instead of to those who sell you the water.
Although there is a lot of talk about the importance of overcoming obstacles, successful people are not big fans of “crashing into” obstacles. They know the main door is not the only way in to reach their goals. Most people ask permission to do certain things; successful people know it is better to do them and then ask forgiveness if necessary.
They talk about breaking the rules (not the law), because the masses follow unwritten, established rules, and something exceptional is not usually achieved by doing what everyone else does.
2. Focus.
The world is full of distractions, and so is our daily life. Today it is even worse: WhatsApp, social networks, the time we waste watching TV shows or reading news that does nothing for our personal growth. Friends with lots of free time, and commitments we don’t even feel like keeping. Politics and football take care of the rest.
It is very hard to focus amid so much distraction. That is why successful businesspeople know they will have to say NO to a great many things. They will learn while others are having fun and create value while others rest. This might look like a sacrifice, but the truth is that they enjoy doing it.
They also know that multitasking is the perfect way to get nothing done, so they have become great time managers. As we always say, time is the same for everyone, and the only way to gain a competitive advantage from time is in the way we use it.
3. The expert generalist.
I believe this term was coined by Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett’s right-hand man and vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway.
A lot has been said about the theory that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to master a skill. But mastering a skill doesn’t guarantee success, because there are people with 40,000 hours of practice who have not become successful.
For example, and I have mentioned this more than once, in my own case, when I worked in sales I was a good salesman, nothing more. But when I combined it with some psychology and neuroscience, my sales results shot up in a fascinating way.
Another example: when I recently started a YouTube channel, I noticed that it doesn’t matter how good you are at the subject you are going to cover; one way or another you will have to learn video editing, audio and so on.
Or take Steve Jobs, who acknowledged that knowledge that seemed useless at university was what later helped him create the company’s first computer.
We are not saying, however, that the generalist can beat the expert, or vice versa. We are talking about the area where the expert and the generalist meet. That overlap is the “zone that takes you to success”.
That is why such people tend to be more creative and have more innovative ideas, as well as the ability to bring them to the public in a way that gets them accepted quickly. In other words, thanks to combining a variety of knowledge with specialisation, their minds are much more open to other kinds of solutions.
See also: Mistakes to avoid when starting a business
4. Success comes from a sequence of conversations: the art of communication.
How do you get a big retail chain to give your product a prime spot? Why would anyone lend you 1 billion to buy aircraft before you have shown that your business is solid and profitable? How do you land big commercial deals with giant companies when you are still a small business owner?
Great entrepreneurs such as Richard Branson, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs have done all of this. How did they do it? With their communication skills and their powers of persuasion.
Communication is the first pillar of convincing and selling. Most great businesspeople are excellent communicators. That is not the case with billionaire Amancio Ortega (Zara), who, as we all know, is extremely shy and would be the exception that proves the rule.
Even so, Ortega has communicated through his product, and he knew how to delegate properly to someone with communication and business management skills, namely Pablo Isla.
Buffett admitted that he had to take courses to learn to speak in public and so lose his fear of communicating.
5. Failure as a source of motivation.
Although this point has been done to death, we can’t ignore the fact that most successful people, one way or another, always talk about failures as lessons and not as a part of their lives they would rather forget.
Failure can knock down an ordinary person and take away any desire to try another business venture, whereas it inspires successful people (and this isn’t cheap motivation). I can’t remember which entrepreneur said he saw failure as an own goal in a match with plenty of time left to play, so he would take the lessons learned and go out to look for victory again.
These businesspeople know they only need to succeed with one business idea, and that success will cover up all the failures.
6. The wish to help.
At times it may seem that these billionaires are greedy sons of b******s, but in most cases their business was born as an idea to help other people. The most notable case is Richard Branson, whose success, as we know, came from looking for ways to solve the complaints customers had about other companies.
In other words, if lots of customers said flying was too expensive, Branson looked for a way for them to travel in more comfort and at a better price than with other airlines.
Successful businesspeople believe that the money they earn is the reward for helping other people meet their needs with their products.
Branson himself used to say that there is no sadder company than one that only makes money.
Look at it this way: Tony Robbins, in his day, looked for a way to help people overcome trauma and improve their lives and the way they think. To do that, he put his ideas into a book. The book became a bestseller, and Tony Robbins earned millions thanks to the help he gave millions of people (translated into the books he sold).
That is why one of the most repeated pieces of advice from most of the businesspeople I have read is that if you are only looking for a way to make money, you will probably die without much money in your bank account.
And then there is also the importance of surrounding yourself with good teams and valuable people, but that is a subject we have already covered on several occasions and I don’t want to repeat myself.
Featured image: Aero Icarus, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Flickr.
