The difference between a millionaire and a billionaire is that billionaires build people not systems and processes.
Table of Contents
Why Billionaire Rules Matter
I’ve spent over 100 hours with billionaires and one thing stood out. They’ve designed their lives so failure isn’t an option.
This isn’t about luck or timing. It’s about a set of rules that compound over time, rules that anyone can apply if they’re serious about building wealth and success.
1. Invest in Your Skill Set Before Your Lifestyle
The fastest way to make yourself unstoppable is to invest in skills that will pay you back forever.
Here are the four high-leverage skills billionaires focus on first:
Sales: Learn how to persuade and communicate value.
Networking: Position yourself as valuable in every conversation.
Leadership: Build people who can scale the business with you.
Vision: Know exactly what you want and believe you can achieve it.
Instead of pouring money into lifestyle upgrades, pour it into coaching, reading books, training, or mentorship. That return compounds.
If you want to make it impossible to fail, learn how to sell.
2. Move Opposite the Crowd
Billionaires don’t follow the herd. They make moves when others hesitate.
Think of Warren Buffet’s famous rule: be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful. When markets are hyped, they step back. When fear dominates, they lean in.
| Scenario | What Most People Do | What Billionaires Do |
|---|---|---|
| Market boom | Buy more | Cash out or hedge |
| Market crash | Panic sell | Buy discounted assets |
| New tech hype | Jump all in | Test, observe, then scale |
This mindset applies beyond investing. It’s about training yourself to see opportunity where others see chaos.
Billionaires go left when everybody’s going right and then they go right when everybody goes left.
3. Diversify After You Win Big
Diversification isn’t the starting line, it’s the next step once you’ve got momentum.
Here’s how billionaires treat their first big payday:
Take 50% and lock it away in safe, boring investments (index funds, ETFs).
Take the other 50% and place bets on new ventures, angel deals, or startups.
This way, you’re never risking the foundation, only playing with the upside.
Anytime they’ve made big buckets of money, they take 50% and say this is going into boring investments. The other 50% goes into risky bets.
4. Play the Long-Term Game
Short-term greed kills momentum. Billionaires extend their horizon to decades, not months.
Short-term: Be generous, create goodwill, and attract allies.
Long-term: Stack wins over 10–20 years, building a reputation and momentum that compounds.
If you’re measuring progress in months, you’ll always play small. Shift your horizon to a decade and every decision gets sharper.
The most successful billionaires I’ve met all were greedy for the long term.
Start Living Like a Billionaire Today
You don’t need billions to apply billionaire rules. What you need is the discipline to focus on skills, zig when others zag, reinvest smart, and think decades ahead.
Play the long game. Build people. Protect your upside. If you do, you’ll create a business and a life that makes failure impossible.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do billionaire rules make it impossible to fail?
Billionaire rules make it impossible to fail by prioritizing skill building over lifestyle, mastering sales, networking, leadership, and vision, and pairing those skills with contrarian timing, smart diversification after a win, and long time horizons that compound results
What skills should I learn first to think like a billionaire and avoid failure?
The first skills to learn to think like a billionaire and avoid failure are sales to communicate value, networking to create opportunity through relationships, leadership to develop people who build the business, and vision to hold clear belief about a 10 to 20 year future
How do I apply the Buffett principle without blowing up my finances?
You apply the Buffett principle by moving opposite the crowd with controlled risk, accumulating when fear is high and trimming when greed is extreme, while sizing positions prudently so a single bet cannot ruin you
What is the right way to diversify after a big payday so I keep my gains?
The right way to diversify after a big payday is to split the windfall into two buckets, placing half into safe boring holdings like broad index funds to protect principal and using the other half for higher risk ventures so upside remains without risking the core
Why is long term greedy better than short term greedy for building wealth?
Long term greedy is better than short term greedy because generosity and value creation in the short run build reputation and relationships, which compound over a decade, while short term extraction damages trust and caps future deal flow
More Resources
Investment Terms Mentioned
Options trading, a way to hedge or bet on market direction when crowds are greedy or fearful
ETF index funds, broad market funds for the safe bucket that protects principal after a win
Angel investing, early stage investing for the risk bucket to pursue asymmetric upside
Bitcoin, cited as an early contrarian bet that illustrates timing against crowd sentiment
Artificial intelligence, cited as a high potential trend where opportunity exists before overcrowding
Full Transcript
Billionaire Rules That Make It Impossible To Fail – YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiqeNJQUWC8
Transcript:
(00:00) I’ve met and spent over 100 hours with four billionaires and one thing that’s always struck me they’ve set their life up so it’s impossible to fail so I’ve put together rules I’ve learned that you can apply to do the same rule number one invest in your skill set not your lifestyle if you spend your time and money on things you’ll never be able to build your skills like a billionaire and these are the highest leverage skills you should learn first if you want to make it impossible to fail number one sales every billionaire has mastered
(00:27) this first they learn the skill of persuading some to give them money it’s not tricking them it’s not convincing them it’s not taking advantage of them it’s communicating value everything you want from hiring somebody convincing a bank to give you money a customer to buy is going to require you to learn how to sell how to communicate how to persuade somebody to part with their hard-earned money if you don’t know how to do this you’re always going to be at the mercy of somebody you hire to be the salesperson you’re going to sit back
(00:54) passiv like I hope you can sell the thing I built that’s not how you move forward you want to make it impossible to fail learn how to sell there’s actually new techniques like sell by chat that my team uses to make millions of dollars per year if you actually want my full script my team uses to generate over 2 million a month just go over to Instagram and message me the word script and I’ll send you the full Google doc on how they do it number two networking in 2008 I moved to San Francisco and for the first 3 weeks I struggled nobody
(01:20) wanted to talk to me and I realized it was the way that I was answering this one question so what do you do and my original response was well I just sold my company I just moved here and I actually don’t know what I’m going to do and I’ll be honest with you people would stop talking to me and turn around and talk to another person at a networking event or at a coffee shop first I just thought people were rude and then on reflection I got some advice from one of my mentors and he said it’s cuz you don’t tell people how you can be of
(01:44) value to them all I shifted was this one thing is I went from new here don’t know what I’m going to do to I help startup founders with marketing I help x with Y change the game for me and allowed me to start connecting with people add value and then meet other very successful people what I’ve learned is you can’t be a billionaire without meeting other billionaires you need to see that it’s possible and if you lost it all as long as you didn’t lose your reputation you got to keep your relationships you could
(02:10) literally build it right back up two to three times faster because of those relationships number three leadership the difference between a millionaire and a billionaire is that billionaires build people not systems and processes and I know a lot of entrepreneurs when they start off they just build processes they build checklists and what they don’t realize is the developing your people developing their skills helping them see the world differently to want to grow that’s where the real Roi is the return on investment they build their people
(02:38) and the people build their business number four is Vision the number one skill that I’ve learned from so many incredible billionaires is that you have to have a vision for your life and it’s three parts it’s 100% Clarity what do you want to build 100% belief that you can build it and holding those two true 100% of the time if you can build those four skills early sales networking leadership and vision you’ll set yourself up for success and make it impossible to fail in life but skills alone won’t make you successful timing
(03:06) and strategy is also involved which leads us directly to rule number two which is be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful this is one of Warren Buffet’s most famous quotes but I actually saw it firsthand with billionaires like Mark cubin doing it at scale I mean he sold his company to Yahoo back in the da and he saw everybody getting super greedy in the tech stock internet market and he said this thing is going to pop so he called his financial adviser and said hey we need to buy options essentially a
(03:37) bet against the market going down so he took some of the money he had to buy those options and when the whole thing crashed he got to remain a billionaire and that’s the whole thing billionaires go left when everybody’s going right and then they go right when everybody goes left the late Charlie Munger Warren Buffett’s business partner would say all the time when the tide goes out you’ll see who’s been swimming naked as an example back in 2012 I’d been exposed to bitcoin and I decided to run the largest event in my hometown got an ATM machine
(04:06) so people could put their dollar bills in and get a little QR code for their Bitcoin and it was trading at 12 bucks they all thought I was literally wearing a tinfoil hat and nobody bought I think my buddy Deni bought and guess what he bought himself a brand new Ferrari then everybody got into it and it got overinflated and then crashed so then I went over and started looking at Ai and AI now today everybody’s talking about it still a huge opport but again you have to figure out where’s everybody focusing and where’s the new opportunity
(04:35) if everybody’s there then you’re in the wrong spot but I wasn’t going all in on a new idea which leads us directly to rule number three which is diversify your risk but before we move into that we have a goal of hitting 500,000 subscribers so if you haven’t subscribed click subscribe and turn on notification it takes just a second so a lot of people will say the best way to get rich is you have to have multiple streams of income which is true once you’re rich but what happens is most people diversify when they’re just starting
(05:05) it’s called diversification not diversification and the truth is is when you finally get a Payday you then want to have a completely different strategy I’ve learned this from the top billionaires anytime they’ve made big buckets of money they take 50% and they put it off to the side and they say this is going into boring Investments I’m talking ETF index funds stuff where it’s like don’t lose my money and then they take the other 50% and they pour it into new Ventures New Opportunities risky Investments that way they don’t lose the
(05:34) bucket of money that they just made and they take the other half to actually go add to it without putting their whole new portfolio at risk and this was the exact advice I got from one of my billionaire mentors when I was 27 I made a bunch of money I was worried I was going to mess it up I said what should I do said 50% Lock and Load don’t lose it the other 50% use that for Angel Investing to invest in your next startup but that is all you got so you got to make it work if you want to make it impossible to fail you need to spread as
(06:01) many chips as possible on the poker table so that taking a risk isn’t really risky which leads us directly to rule number four which is be long-term greedy not short-term greedy I first heard this concept from one of my mentors in my 20s who’s one of the world’s top investors in Silicon Valley and I tell it to my team all the time when they’re trying to build their world their wealth their opportunities I always say be long-term greedy don’t be short-term don’t try to take advantage of all the situations in
(06:29) front of you the most successful billionaires I’ve met all were greedy for the longterm we’re talking 10 to 20 years they’re focus on the future CU they want to build momentum they never get greedy in the short term short term is actually silly because the numbers are so small they get really big the further out you project what’s unique about them is they were actually extremely generous in the short term which creates a massive amount of Goodwill in the market people want to see them win because they know they’ll
(06:57) also win with them if you want to set yourself up for guaranteed success extend the time Horizon to hit your goal most people mess this up because their time Horizon is 6 months 12 months 2 years and when you’re in business with people that play small games you get small returns you want to decide to dedicate a decade 10 years partner with somebody build people over the long term show them how the shortterm goals and focus you’re asking of them is going to set them up for the long-term big goals if you want to learn the 44 cheat codes
(07:27) I wish I knew in my 20s click the video and I’ll see on on the other side