Peter
I had read not all that long ago that Carlos Slim didn’t speak English, so it was a pleasant surprise to discover that he does and quite well too.
Here is highlite from the interview. He repeats the fact that tycoons are driven by a need to build something great. It’s not about merely accumulating money quickly so as to be able to show off to anyone. That type of goal rarely works for anyone.
Life is like a snowball. The important thing is finding wet snow and a really long hill. — Warren Buffett
The answer to the question of how Carlos Slim Helu became so wealthy can be traced in large measure back to his childhood. Carlos was fortunate enough to receive an early start in his business training from his businessman father. There’s a school of thought that kids who grow up in a family where dad (or mom) is an entrepreneur are far more likely to become entrepreneurs themselves. I participated in an extended debate over this years ago with a couple of colleagues. At first I resisted the proposition but came to accept it over time. I know a well-known entrepreneur who explained how he got the entrepreneurial bug early on this way. One evening, when he was about 10 years old, he sat silently in the living room listening to his dad negotiate a bank loan over the telephone. That’s when it hit him that he wanted to be a businessman too. Most of my successful entrepreneurial associates had entrepreneur fathers.
To kick off the first ever Annual Carlos Slim Week, here’s a short insight into the man.
After Carlos Slim had pretty much acquired everything that he could in Mexico without triggering a revolution by the populace, he had to start looking outside of the country for investment opportunities. On a trip to New York he went shopping at Saks Fifth Avenue the up-scale department store. While most shoppers would have been absorbed by the merchandise and what to buy, Carlos Slim’s mind was on bigger matters as is the case typically with tycoons. He looked up the company’s share price on the NYSE. Then he estimated the square footage of the store and asked a friend in real estate what the per sq. ft. price was for retail space in the area. These two numbers multiplied then gave him the market value of the Saks real estate.
The Ignored Growth Strategy
When people ask which tycoons best exemplify the Tycoon Playbook approach to building a business empire, Carlos Slim always comes to mind. If you scan the annual lists of billionaires you will see that most made their money either through wheeling and dealing in assets (i.e., businesses for the most part) the way Carlos Slim did. Some used it as their primary growth strategy while others used it as a secondary one. The billionaires who made their money by focusing on building one technology company are far and few between. Unfortunately, the media is currently obsessed with the Zuckerbergs, Brins, Pages, and Bezos.
My mission is to right this sorry state of affairs and swing the limelight back to the best role models for most entrepreneurs.
Richard Branson just repeated the dubious old claim that the best business lessons come from failed startups. They don’t.
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