Your Power Drive To Riches

Your power drive to riches

THE individual routes to wealth are myriad, yet it is startling in their similarity. And so are the men and women who are driven to amass riches. They are all sorts, thin and fat, short and tall, white and black, yellow and red. But they could have been stamped out by the same cookie cutter.

  Indeed, a high percentage of self-made multi-millionaires come from a background of poverty. There is nothing so surprising about rags-to-riches pattern. A psychologist would be surprised only if the pattern did not exist. Just as sex is an over-powering drive, so is the drive to accumulate money can be overwhelmingly powerful for someone who grew up poor. Which is why money looks bigger than life to poor people.

  In one study in which people were asked to estimate the size of a dollar bill, the poorest group consistently saw it as larger than life size, while middle and high income participants came very close to estimating the actual size. Education is not an important factor in amassing wealth. Often, it is the man who has gone no further than the second year of high school who makes the fortune. “I was too dump to know that what I was doing was impossible,” said one man who had built an immense fortune. These men are audacious. They take gambles that others would not touch and work like galley slaves to make such gambles pay off. An economics journalist who has observed the rich for decades says: “None of the self-made millionaires I’ve ever met seemed to be stupid or just lucky.”

  They are smart, shrewd; they spot trends, foresee needs; they are geniuses at making money out of other people’s ideas. This is the secret of making money, capitalizing on the creativity of others and turning it into practical money-making ideas.

  The passion for financial success replaces all other needs they may have, thus their desire for success transcends all other desires. “Winning is a question of desire,” says the founder of a motel chain who grew up poor and dropped out of school at 14. “You have got to be hungry for wealth to succeed,” he says. The mediocre is the guy who works only eight hours a day, who doesn’t take any risks, who doesn’t take risks. He is the guy who will trade everything he’s got for a little bit of security. Wealth seekers aren’t after “a bit of security,” they are after a whole lot of money. And the process of accumulating it is everything to them. No matter how much money such winners have made, they never have enough. They always feel deprived.

  But not all the men who have made riches their goal in life – and have accumulated vast wealth, are quite this frugal. But inside them, there is still that poor little boy who promised himself that one day he was going to be richer than Midas. Rich beyond belief. Psychological portraits of men who seek wealth reveal a sense of isolation, of loneliness of the hungry-for-love child within. Does this mean that wealth seekers should make an effort to change their goal? To work for fame, success in business or politics? Absolutely not. These would be artificial goals. That would not be anything near their goals. They want money and the making of money is an utterly absorbing pursuit. It gives the wealth seekers more satisfaction, more pleasure than anything else. And it is what they should do.

  Andrew Carnegie, the 19^th century steel tycoon, used to tell young men who sought his advice, “put all your eggs in one basket, then watch that basket, that’s the way to make money.”  In our age of rapid change, committing all one’s eggs to one basket is likely the road o bankruptcy. Accumulating wealth is a far more complicated feat than it was three generations ago. But it can be done. It has been done. As the title of this piece hints, there is just one road to riches. Although it may seem that the roads to wealth are myriad, the fact is that they are too similar to be more than one.

  The fortunes of self made millionaires come from diverse sources – oil, real estate, inventions and shrewd investments: one thousand and one combinations of these and other sources – but the ways wealth seekers seize upon these sources and turn them to solid cash are practically identical.

  Here are five guidelines; because your attitude and the way you channel your inner drives are far more important than your need for money. These guidelines are basic, for you can use them for any plan with which to make money.

  One, make money your mistress. Don’t waste time and energy on sex. You will discover making money is more orgasmic than sex.

  Two, find a need and fill it. Wealth seekers who spotted such trends foresaw such needs like Henry Ford filled the need for cheap cars, then, Germany’s Volkswagen Beetle.

  Three: Beware of crowd psychology, it is disastrous. Do not follow crowds. Four: Be the boss. The man who makes the fortune is the employer, not the employee. Unless you stole riches from your employer, you can never be a millionaire as an employee. Finally, develop your manipulating skills. To retain wealth to any length of time you have to be persuading others to obey your orders. Wealth seekers are adept at manipulating others intuitively.

  Our champion this week is Jim Yong Kim, the new World Bank President who resumes at the bank in July. Born in South Korea in 1959, Jim Yong Kim is a Korean-American physician, the 17^th president (Vice Chancellor) of Dartmouth University. The academic was formerly of Harvard Medical School, a co-founder of Partners In Health, recently appointed World Bank president.

  Young Kim received his B.A. first class from Brown University in 1982, MD from Harvard Medical School in 1991 and a PhD. in Anthropology from Harvard in 1993. His Partners In Health (PIH) organization began radical community focused healthcare programmes in Haiti, achieving remarkable success treating diseases at low cost. Kim was instrumental in designing treatment protocols and cutting deals for cheaper, more effective drugs.

  The PIH model was expanded in Peru in 1994. By 1998, extremely successful results curing all ailments prompted the World Health Organization to embrace the model and support the adoption of community based care to impoverished communities around the world. Kim’s work with PIH to treat tuberculosis was the first large scale attempt to treat the disease in poor countries. Kim was appointed adviser to the director-general of WHO in 2003 – as a result of the successes of the treatment model he invented. In March 2004, he was appointed director of WHO HIV/AIDS department. As of 2012, his programme has treated more than seven million Africans.

  Between 1993 and 2009, Kim had served as lecturer at Harvard Medical School. He eventually became professor of medicine, social medicine and human rights. In March 2009, Kim was named Vice Chancellor of Dartmouth University, the position he has held till today. In January 2010, Kim helped partner Dartmouth students and faculty with PIH to respond to the earthquake in Haiti. The response success was staggering. In April 2010 Kim launched the National College Health Improvement Project (NCHIP) which convenes health institutions to address student health issues. Also in May 2010 he helped secure an anonymous grant of $35 million to establish a centre for Health Care Delivery Science. It was Kim’s ability to add value to any organization where he works that enabled him to win the presidency of the World Bank. He is the first Asian, first physician to lead World Bank since 1944.