Jul '24 • Tips
Lessons From Romance Novel Billionaires
I've been reading some romance novels recently. (You know, the ones where the heroine has kids with a billionaire.) And I noticed something interesting.
The authors, to the best of my knowledge, are not billionaires themselves, but the way they portray the economic activities of the fictional billionaires that they write about mirror the economic activities of real life billionaires.
Especially in how they make and spend their money.
The billionaires make money by either:
Solving big problems for people for which they get paid high fees (Note: that doesn't mean that the billionaire has to do the work of solving the problem themselves, often they just connect the person with the problem to someone with the solution and collect a fee as the middleman.)
Creating businesses around the solutions
Selling all or part of a business to others
Collecting capital gains - buying low and selling high
Buying other businesses
Buying assets and turning them into businesses
They spend their money lavishly looking to save time, please someone important to them, or achieve a particular result.
Price is not really a consideration, and they will often “overpay” for something if they end up getting what they want.
The billionaires are very clear about their goals and will do just about anything to achieve them.
Thus, it isn't overpaying if they can simply use money to get what they want faster and easier.
They figure that when they need more money, they will just go create it using one or more of the methods listed above.
Sure, they could try to negotiate and get things cheaper, but usually they don't waste their time on that. They would rather just pay what is required, obtain the item, use it to reach their goal, and move on.
They buy their way into special treatment, positions of power and influence, lucrative relationships, and out of whatever predicament they can.
Sometimes their money isn't enough and they have to use other means to get what they want. Hence the usefulness of buying that power and influence and those connections.
Jesus praises the unjust steward for using unrighteous Mammon to make friends.
Contrast that with The more normal people in these books who do their jobs and hope to get paid.
They even do extra work to try and collect a bonus, or win extra favor with their boss.
They look to their boss to tell them what to do, and their biggest personal goal seems to be to not get fired.
When, in these novels, the normal person spends money, they are very aware of the price.
Usually they are afraid that if they spend too much, then because they have a fixed income or limited salary, they won't be able to make ends meet or afford other things.
Thus, they are more focused on saving money rather than making it.
Sometimes the normal people calculate the cost of an item the billionaire buys by the amount of work, number of hours, years of their life, or other items they, as a normal person, would have to give up in order to be able to afford that item for themselves. This leaves the character, and presumably the reader, in a state of astonishment.
The billionaire, on the other hand, doesn't even think twice about it and just makes the purchase, or has someone else make it for them.
That's because, to a billionaire, everything costs about the same.
They don't calculate price by what work they have to do, or what they have to give up. Rather, they calculate it in terms of how much closer to their goal will it get them.
Then, they just go create a new offer and make another deal to get the money they need.
So everything just costs them the same effort it takes to make another deal. Whether they make a deal that brings in big bucks or little bucks, the effort to make the deal is about the same.
So, usually in the books, the billionaire will make the deals for the big bucks and let other people handle the details and smaller transactions for them.
When you look at the lives and behaviors of real life billionaires, you find that they act the same as the ones in the book do.
One might be tempted to think that they act that way because they are billionaires, and that may be the case.
On the other hand, one could argue that the reason why they ARE billionaires is because they think and act that way.
Take a look at the Forbes 400 list of real life billionaires.
Not a single one got there by scrimping and saving.
Sure there are a few that are on that list because they inherited or married into money, but most built their fortunes themselves.
If you look at the so-called “self-made” billionaires on that list, you will quickly see that for most, the bulk of their fortunes came from selling a business either to a bigger company or to the public or to both for a very handsome fee.
Usually, they did this multiple times. They would start or acquire a business, build it up a bit, sell all or part of it for a large sum, then repeat that process with one or more businesses.
The initial business they started with may have been rather small and seemingly insignificant, but by cycling through this process 4 or 5 times, the scale got bigger and bigger to the point where eventually they became the billionaire we know them as today.
Note: it wasn't the actual running of the business that got them to billionaire status, rather, it was the selling of the businesses or shares in them that got them there.
So, if you want to achieve billionaire status someday, then might I suggest you learn a few lessons from the billionaires in romance movies and novels and start acting as they do.
.1. Get clear on your goals.
.2. Use your money to buy the things, solutions, connections, services, etc. you need to achieve those goals regardless of what it costs.
.3. Find people with big problems and connect them for a fee to those folks with solutions to those problems.
.4. Put the systems in place to provide those solutions to people at scale and on a recurring basis.
.5. Put a good team of people in place to run those systems.
.6. Package the whole thing up as a business.
.7. Sell part or all of that business to a bigger company or to the public or both for a hefty fee.
.8. Repeat as needed until you get what you want.
If you want help in making this happen, then just
let me know and I can either help you myself or put you in touch with someone who can.
Maranatha!
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Lessons From Romance Novel Billionaires
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