This is a blog in series Wiki Business that shares insights about the business topic, and today I love to share the story about how to build wealth from the richest man in my town to you.
Being a millionaire from zero is the same way as you play the snowball. You start with a tiny snowball then roll it more and more until it becomes a massive snowball that you never ever imagine before.
It makes you feel extremely happy and amazed about your ability to make the tiny snow turn into the big snowball when you are a kid.
And when you grow up, if you can turn your “zero starting point” into multi-million dollars and help to change the life of thousands of people, how do you think it will look like?
The person who is the main character in this story is Mr. D (I don’t show his full name as he wants to keep a secret about his identity), the richest man in my hometown for the last 10 years.
A person with the value of the assets is approx. US$ 50 million dollars right now (and nearly US $ 100 million dollars before the pandemic); the CEO of the company with more than 3000 staff; and in the list of top 60 richest men on the stock market in Vietnam.
It’s not about bragging, what I want to do is show you how wealthy he is before sharing with you your five valuable lessons he taught me about how to be wealthy and have a happy life.
Before we start to figure out how this mand build wealth, I want to share you something firstly:
If you don’t know a lot about the Vietnam market yet, the average monthly income per capita in Vietnam in 2019 is just around US$ 200 per month, and if a normal Vietnamese person wants to earn $US 1M, it will take this person around 416 years to achieve.
Therefore, having US$ 50 million in Vietnam somehow can be considered as you have billion dollars in America.
And I am lucky to know him for many years even before he is known as the richest man in my hometown because his family is my family’s friend.
Therefore, I have many chances to meet him in real life and learn a lot of valuable lessons from him, especially about the way how he develops himself to achieve this level of success.
In the following parts, I will share with you about five biggest lessons that I learned from him during the last 10 years, from the time he just has around US$ 100 thousand dollars in the bank account until now, when he owns more than US$ 50 million dollars.
No. 1 to build wealth: 30 minutes rule — Always come early than others
This is the lesson I learned from him when I have a chance to join in an international event with him and his family.
In this event, he is the main sponsor who sponsored nearly US$ 70,000 for just a half-day event back in 2015. This is a huge amount of money at that time, and now still.
On that day, I still remember that we come around 45 minutes early when no guest comes yet.
At that time, I was very curious when seeing he comes too early while he is the most important person in this event — I mean, if he comes later, it still be OK.
And because I used to join in many seminars and meetings before where I saw many V.I.P guests normally come up just on time or can be late for minutes. Everyone still needs to wait and no one complains if the V.I.P comes late.
So when I see Mr. D coming nearly one hour before the event start, I feel really curious and ask him the reason why he decides to come so early when still no guests come yet, and just a few set-up staff are working.
Then, he smiled and told me that
If I come late, it means I don’t respect the time of others. And as a businessman, the time is the money and the reputation for me.
And if I come early, like today, I still have more than a half-hour to prepare for my speaking and if anyone comes early and wants to talk with me, I still can give them a few minutes to talk. If I come late, I can’t.
And I also have a “30 minutes rule” that I will come at least 30 minutes before any important event. So it helps me to reduce the risk of getting a traffic jam or feel hurried up when come late.
Anthony (my name), if you want to be a successful businessman, you also need to learn this lesson. Never late and keep for yourself at least 30 minutes in advance.
From that moment, I recognize a very important lesson about doing business. It’s not just about which position you are standing in this society, but it is more about the way how you treat others and use your time wisely.
As the way Mr. D came early on that day, he had time to practice his speech twice before the event started while still having time to make a couple of conversations with other guests, and received several calls to solve the business problems remotely.
And this is a great lesson that any of us can learn from him, about how to arrange the timeline.
When you can set up your time to come early on the important events for a half-hour at least, it helps you have more time to prepare for your speech or make friends with others that maybe can lead to a new business opportunity for you(who knows).
Another important point is you will feel safe and not hurry, the feeling that you can’t have if you are late or on time and worried that many people are waiting for you.
No. 2 to build wealth: Being a good listener and always smile
I learned this lesson when Mr.D joined in an evening dinner with my family, I asked him this question
“Mr.D, what do you think the most important character that I should have to be a successful businessman?”.
He told me
If you want to be a successful businessman, the first and most important is you need have is
“Being a good listener and always smile”.
This is the shortest answer about how to build the wealth that I used to hear.
I thought that maybe he will give me a long form of the lesson about it, but didn’t. However, when he explained to me the reason why he says like that, I think he’s right and that’s more than enough for me to start with.
As he explained, being a good listener is a very important skill because when we listen to others, it means that we are learning more about that person, that project.
But when we spend too much time talking, it means that we give out the information, knowledge to others. And we don’t get anything new into our minds.
And in the business, the more you know about your partners and projects, the more ability for you have to win and make an impact.
Moreover, the idea of always smiling is because when you smile, people can feel you are an easy-to-connect person. So, they will want to spend more time with you and feel safe when doing that.
But when your face is serious, people will feel scared and nervous when talking with you and don’t want to share all their thoughts, their feelings with you.
If you work with the partners or your staff, and you can’t create a safe and comfortable feeling for them to share. You will fail to understand them and work with them effectively to create success.
Let check this blog if you want to know more about “3 important things that make you be a great listener”.
No. 3 to build wealth: Being a father in the family, not being a boss.
“Never being a boss in your family, let be a lovely daddy”
This is what Mr. D tells me when we talked about the balance between working and family life.
“A very important indicator to show how wealthy a person is”, he said.
Following him, a really successful and wealthy person is someone who has a happy life with a big bank account, if you lack one of them, you can’t be considered as a fully successful and wealthy person.
As he said, being a leader who has the authority to control more than 3000 people is an interesting job but not easy, and many times, you need to make the hard decision as a leader to adjust the small groups of people to consolidate the belief of the massive group.
“In the company, you can do it, and most of the time, it works.” — Mr. D said
But when you try to use the boss trait in your house, with your wife and your kids, it doesn’t make sense or even can make your family get into trouble if you use too much of authority power.
Because your kid will love, admire and collaborate with you to do the things you want them to do as you are their lovely daddy, not because you are a boss who can fire them if they do not follow your demands.
So if you want all the things in your small family to go well and be your strong foundation for you to achieve more goals in life, make sure to be a really good and lovely daddy, husband instead of being a boss in your own family.
No. 4 to build wealth: Think carefully before promising anything, and if you promise, you need to do it.
This is the character that any leader who wants to have outstanding success needs to have
Keeps your promise.
“And if you don’t make sure 100% that you can do it, don’t promise it.”
Mr.D taught me.
Because your promise presents for your personal character to others. And if you can’t keep your promise, you appear in others’ minds as an untrustful person who they can’t believe and trust.
“As a leader, a CEO who has authority with more than 3000 people directly and thousands family’s life indirectly. I need to commit to do all my promise if I talked, especially with my staff.
Sometimes, it’s very tough, but it is necessary to keep the promise that helps me to build trust with others” — Mr. D said.
For me and you, maybe we don’t have that big authority to thousands of people. But being a trustworthy person is a character that we can learn and need to practice to make it become ourselves.
Because the more success you have, the more trustworthy you need to be.
No. 5 to build wealth: Never stop learning, the more you learn, the more you can earn
This lesson is actually not from what Mr. D directly taught me. This is what I know from his wife, a great woman who behinds his success when she shared with me about the habit of Mr.D for years, this is self-learning.
On the 2nd floor in his house, he has owned a library with hundreds of books that he keeps reading for years every evening for at least an hour.
And when I come to visit his house, many times I visited his library, where not only books about business topics but also a lot of books from different topics such as politics, economics, cultures, history of countries that he owns.
The habit of learning every day and has owned a library in the house is the thing that I see in common of many successful people such as Gary Vee, Jim Kwik, Warren Buffet,…
The advantage of this habit is helping you to keep learning and growing your mindset, the main factor that will decide your success.
With just a few bucks, you already can have the mindset of successful people by buying and reading their books. It is so cheap compared to having a meal outside or treating your friends to coffee, but the value of it is outstanding for your success.
And this is a habit that if you can keep and grow daily, doesn’t matter how old you are, it will benefit you in your whole life game.
As Mr. D, now, he is around 60 years old and still keeps this reading habit every single day for years.
So there is no limitation for you when keeping this habit if you think you are too young or too old to start to build the habit of reading and learning every day.
Final thought
I know that this story is a very personal story when I share about a specific person that I know in my life. Normally, I don’t write in this way.
But the valuable lessons that Mr.D taught me about how to build wealth and I self-observed and learned from him give me more motivation to create this story to share with you.
Because I believe that these lessons can in some way help you like the way it helps me to grow myself and be a better version every single day on the journey to be a millionaire.
If you can dream, and put the hard work, then know the right lessons from the right people at the right time.
Any dream you have, as I do, will become true!
P/s:
Thank you for checking this blog, I am also running a Youtube Channel to share a lot of insights and stories related to Business, Media & Marketing, Personal Finance & Self Development that you can
