Learning From The Best: How Studying The Wealthy Helped Me Achieve Success

I am not your average 15-year-old. I started my first business at age 8, and over the last seven years served clients from four continents.

I published two personal growth books over the last 12 months and was named Caribbean Journal's Entrepreneur of the Year 2013. People often ask me how was I able to achieve so much success in my young life.

Here's the answer: I studied the wealthiest people who ever lived and tried to execute what they did to achieve success faithfully.

When I was in the second grade I became obsessed with studying successful people. I wanted to find out what made them different and what exactly went on in their minds.

How do they think, act and behave, and why? I thought if I discovered this, I would be able to multiply and duplicate their successes. Here are three common traits I've found among some of the world's wealthiest persons:

1)  Wealthy People Own Businesses

If you want to be wealthy, you have to own a business. Most parents teach their children to save their allowances and watch their savings account grow.

This is good; however, it is only half of what anyone should do with his or her finances. I dare you to name one person who created wealth by solely saving a portion of his or her income. It's just not possible, and in the long-run, money that stays in a saving account depreciates in value thanks to inflation.

A more logical thing to do is to save a portion your income and then invest another portion in a business -- whether your own or someone else's. By deploying your money into businesses, you allow your capital to be working in the marketplace every day.

What I did was save a pool of cash in a high-interest bearing account and invested the rest in my businesses. Last year, I even took it a step further by investing in the stock market and private corporations.

This allowed me to realize returns that I wouldn't have seen if I had put all my cash into a savings account. 

2)  Wealthy People Are On A Constant Pursuit To Maximize Their Potential

Have you wondered why successful people rarely retire? Think about it: Most people who win millions at the lotto normally decide to take early retirement, but successful people who create large amounts of wealth continue to work, despite having more money than they can spend. Why is that so?

After watching countless billionaire and millionaire entrepreneurs being interviewed, I concluded that the number-one reason why they are able to achieve success in life is because they are always trying to get to the next level.

Donald Trump, Warren Buffet, Bill Gates and Oprah Winfrey are all successful because they are always aiming to work at the highest possible levels in their lives. Successful people make the most of every second and are on a pursuit to maximize their potential.

3)  Wealthy Persons Do Not See Money As a Bad Thing

I love making money, and I will never apologize for that. For some reason, society tries to vilify those who ethically create wealth for themselves.

However, have you noticed that the ones who condemn wealth creation aren't successful? I have never heard of successful people believing wealth creation is bad.

It is my emphatic belief that one should maximize his or her potential here on earth, and it is almost impossible for you to do so if you do not create wealth for yourself.

Successful people see wealth creation as a moral responsibility so that they can be financially secure in life. Creating wealth is just as important as taking your daily vitamins; both actions help to protect you and your life in the event of a future crisis.

The successful understand that the natural by-product of success is complacency, and complacency begets failure. This is why they continue to create more wealth, not because of greed.

In order to become wealthy, you have to embrace money.

We should all study those who have achieved success. It is very important to learn how they got where they are and learn from the mistakes they made, but allow ourselves to make our own mistakes, as well.

Approach wealth creation as a good thing. Challenge yourself to work at your highest potential, start to invest in your future and hopefully you, too, will become wealthy.

Photo Courtesy: We Heart It