What WW2 POW Movies Can Teach You About Not Only Surviving But Prospering as Well
There’s a lot of interest these uncertain days in business ideas and skills which will retain their value in regardless of the economic conditions. If you want to discover one of the best skills to cultivate into a viable business, go rent those old WW II POW movies such as King Rat, Stalag 17, The Great Escape, and Empire of the Sun. Although my memory has faded over the past 30 years since I saw them as a kid, they invariably had a stock character: the trader. This is the POW who starts off with nothing, just like his fellow prisoners, and then parlays some small asset into a business based on wheeling and dealing in anything that has value inside the environment from cigarettes to soap to tooth brushes.
How Did Billionaire Carlos Slim Become the Richest Man in the World?
Life is like a snowball. The important thing is finding wet snow and a really long hill. — Warren Buffett
The answer is that Carlos Slim did it the tried and true old-school way: deal-making. Deal-making is defined here as the acquisition of numerous assets over a prolonged period of time. The intention is to increase the value of the assets so that they can at some point be sold off at a massive profit. Most of these are assets will be businesses. Most are then kept long-term because they are “cash cows,” to reference the famous Boston Consulting Group portfolio matrix. Others maybe flipped after a shorter period of time.
Charlie Rose talks with Brazilian billionaire Eike Batista about how he got started, his management and investing style, and philosophy. Eike is one of the most candid tycoons today. He has a shot at becoming the richest man in the world due to his oil holdings.
Russia’s Richest Man: Billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov
This is the 60 Minutes interview with the 6′ 8″, jock billionaire who is currently Russia’s wealthiest man. He spends two hours every day working out no matter what is happening around him. (This is a great habit to cultivate.) Prokhorov makes an interesting point about having been one of the Oligarchs who got his start in what one historian calls “frontier capitalism.”This is when there’s no rule of law by which to conduct business. During the first decade after the collapse of the USSR there were no rules to govern business because capitalism had been illegal for roughly 70 years. “It was Wild West. It was a territory with no sheriff, no rules, you need to survive.” You had to have the courage to go out and cease opportunities and then worry about holding onto them afterwards.Oftentimes, this meant literally risking your life.
Mark Cuban gives a short talk on what the right attitude for success is.
Click to watch.
Recent Comments