From Europe’s economic debt woes, to the US’s ever widening gap between the haves and the have-nots best symbolized by the Occupy Wall Street movement, there are clear signs that the developed world is struggling to create an economic system that reaches balance and prosperity.  But are the principles of capitalism to blame, or are there some other factors at play here?

Listen to the debaters at Davos as they shed some light into this fascinating topic that is critical to the success of people across the globe:

Top World Minds Debate Capitalism in Davos is a post from: Worldwide Success

But what you may be wondering is how to become one of them.  We have numerous articles on the site that talk about how to become financially successful, and you should look around to find out the secrets of the wealthy.  And as you already know or will find out, education has a lot do to with it.

That being the case, the obvious question for those of you that are still young enough to be in a position to decide what to study, might be  “what should I major in if I want to become a one percenter?”

Well, here is some interesting data that you may want to consider.  The New York Times published an article called What the Top 1% Earners Majored In.  It is easy to guess that many pre-Med majors have become one percenters, but the rest of the data may surprise you. 

Consider this just a data point, and not something to obsess over.  At the end of the day, it is much more important that you study a subject that you enjoy and find a line of work that you can be good at and happy with.

What to Study to Get to the Top 1% is a post from: Worldwide Success

Some of Mark’s rules are well recognized in the entrepreneurial world and should not come as a surprise to you:

• You should be passionate about the business
• You should focus on what you know (core competency)
• Nothing happens until you actually have sales (or sales cures all as he says)

Others are less conventional, and some I have to disagree with:

• Mark says you should not buy an expresso machine.  I say, if that is what it takes for people to work extra hard every day, go for it.
• He says no offices – maybe this will work for very small companies, but once your startup start getting a little bigger offices may be in order.
• He says if you have an exit strategy, it’s not an obsession – I think you can be passionate (obsessed) about the business and still have an exit strategy.  In fact many entrepreneurs would say that an exit strategy is an essential part of a well thought out plan.

But regardless of whether you agree or disagree with Mark, he has proven himself as a great entrepreneur, so you should listen carefully to what he has to say.

Mark Cuban on Startups is a post from: Worldwide Success

But don’t let the simplicity of the book fool you (don’t judge a book by its format).  There are lots of little jams in here.  It is particularly interesting to learn how this sports-team owner billionaire started. You have to love the humility in a title that says : “If I  Can Do It, You Can Do It”.  When you read the book you feel like this is something anyone can do. You get the sense that Mark was just a guy like you and I.  He may have had a little luck, but he always talks about hard work and getting prepared, and I think this has a lot to do with Mark’s success.

If you are going to skip around and not read it like a book, go straight to the last chapter: Twelve Cuban Mantras for Success.  Every single one of Mark’s mantras resonate with everything this site is about.  We’ll review three of them here, but you need to get the book to get the full story:

Time is More Valuable Than Money

You may have heard that time is money, but did you ever think that time was more valuable than money?  Mark is absolutely right when he says that how wisely you use your time will have far more impact on your success than any amount of money.

Expect the Unexpected and Always de Ready

Preparation is so important for success, and yet it is amazing how many people want to just wing it and not spend the time and energy required to prepare.  When you are prepared you feel secure and gain the confidence required to be truly successful.

Everyone Gets Down; The Key is How Soon You Get Back Up

This is so true.  You will not always feel motivated, successful, and there will be times when you feel defeated.  But you have to get up and keep on going.  Those that do, succeed.

Mark Cuban on Success is a post from: Worldwide Success

From bouncer to technology salesman at TrueSan Networks, to entrepreneur, Tim worked very hard until he realized he was spending too much of his time working and not enough “living”.

Watch the whole story here:

Learn More About Tim Ferriss is a post from: Worldwide Success

Here’s a statistics that shows the hidden side of these corporate celebrities. Venture capitalists only fund about one percent of proposals. In the past 10 years, venture capitalists funded 30,000 start-up companies, but only a dozen made it to the status of a Google. Wow! 

Whenever I meet someone from outside the start-up community or a first-time would-be entrepreneur, I find their perception of what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur or build the next Google is far from reality. In the early stages of a new business, the truth is there is little difference between what’s needed for the next Google and what’s needed for any thriving small business. 

When a new business is created, the founder doesn’t often know enough to write a business plan, but they write one anyway. Why? Because someone said they should. As a result, the business plan is mostly a work of fiction. It is nothing more than wishful thinking. It’s based upon a pile of what if’s and assumptions. If any one doesn’t pan out, it falls apart like a house of cards.  In the very beginning, entrepreneurs should ditch the business plan because they aren’t ready to write one yet. Instead they should start with a concept plan, a precursor to the business plan. Basically, in five short pages, it outlines what they think they are going to build and how they are going to make money from it. Most importantly, it states what the start-up needs to determine in order to create the true business plan – what are the assumptions and theories about the business, and what business experiments are needed to validate these notions.

It’s the mindset that causes the problems with the day one business plan. The business plan causes the business failure because entrepreneurs and their employees treat it as if it is a recipe and follow the instructions step by step, as if they are certain it will yield the desired results. The concept plan seems to shift the focus on flexibility, adaptability, discovery, and learning about the customers and market.

A new company isn’t about the product or technology, it’s about the business of the product. No start-up ever failed because they could not develop the product. Start-ups are almost always founded by those with a specific technical skill, maybe they are software programmers or a physician or an architect. What happens is the new company becomes heavily focused on the product or service, often to the neglect of everything else.  In Silicon Valley, investors only attribute 10% of the evaluation of a business proposal to the product; the other 90% is the business of the product.

The first big hurdle is marketing, not product development. Because of the technical or skilled background of the founders, they believe marketing can start after the product is completed. They don’t realize how long it takes to develop demand. Marketing is always 2 to 3 times the amount of effort as product development, and the marketing effort should be started as soon as possible. If a start-up doesn’t feel comfortable publicly talking about the product before it’s ready, then talk about the problem instead. Unlike development, marketing isn’t completely within the control of the company because you are dealing with people – and people are unpredictable and fickle, and how they react to something new can be a surprise.

Interesting enough, if you ask most first-time entrepreneurs what is the first hurdle, they will almost always say funding. You read about it all the time in the media, one of the top reasons for business failure is undercapitalization. Rubbish. Venture capitalists run billion dollar funds.  Each of those 30,000 venture-backed start-ups had the money behind them – lack of capital was not the issue.  If capital was the biggest factor to business success, venture capitalists wouldn’t have such a track record of failure. Lack of capital is simply the scapegoat. 

What most entrepreneurs miss is that funding is a sales process and it’s a full time workload. Initially, entrepreneurs believe the hardest part of creating the next Google is having the perfect product idea and then landing the investors. Of course, it will be love at first sight for the investors and it will be a no-brainer to invest in their idea. The typical shocking response from the investors is they want proof-of-concept. When an investor says ‘proof-of-concept’, they mean a demonstration of a working business model that can be easily and obviously scaled up. However, entrepreneurs think they want a demonstration of the product and this is only the beginning of the gap between them. Investors want to see customers and revenue. Investors want evidence that the start-up has gotten past the concept plan and has moved onto a viable business plan – one that is non-fiction.

What the Silicon Valley start-up community has learned is that success or failure of a new business is really a people issue. It’s the people involved in the project, it’s the team that matters most. Being an entrepreneur is hard. It’s a pay for performance position. Many entrepreneurs are really looking for a better job; they want to swap employment by a company for that by investors. These wannabes are easy to spot. They leave the start-up community as soon as it’s apparent that being an entrepreneur is difficult and effort isn’t enough to succeed. This is really the reason why only one percent of proposals are funded by investors. Most of them are junk proposals. Investors know the quality ones are by those entrepreneurs who offer the proof-of-concept desired. Investors can sit and wait until the right proposal comes along.

Investors are difficult to work for. They expect performance against the business plan, another reason why getting funded on a work of fiction lands entrepreneurs in trouble.  Until an entrepreneur understands investors as well as they understand their customers, they shouldn’t seek funding.

If there is one big roadblock that stands between an entrepreneur and their potential success, it is their view of the journey to success, which has been painted by the media, Hollywood, and their assumptions based on inexperience. A successful entrepreneur and start-up really is a matter of the right stuff.

Why Some Entrepreneurs Succeed and Most Fail is a post from: Worldwide Success

Here are some key take aways from the article:

•  40% of the affluent say their biggest fear is they will do all the right things today and still not have enough for tomorrow.
•  9% say the fear they have under saved and won’t recover
•  25%  say they are not confident they will have saved enough for retirement
• 42% of affluent women say they need to cut back their spending significantly in order to save for retirement
• 12%  feel they will have to work until 80 years of age

The survey group was split evenly between Americans with  investable assets between $100,000 and $250,000 and those with more than $250,000.

Considering what the experts are saying about the amount of investable assets required to retire comfortably, it is not surprising to see these kinds of answers.  Remember that even $1 million may not be enough for the average American family to retire on.  If the median affluent men and women only have $400,000 and $250,000 respectively saved for retirement, they indeed have a long way to go before they hit the magic $1 million to $3 million suggested by financial advisers as an amount sufficient for the average American family to retire on.

That being the case, what are the chances the middle class will ever retire?

Even the Rich Don’t Have Enough to Retire is a post from: Worldwide Success

Most importantly, if you really want to be part of the one percenters there are some really interesting statistics that you should pay attention to.

According to an article by Forbes.com, titled How to Get to the Top 1%?  Earn a Graduate Degree, about 49% of the top 1% have earned postgraduate degrees, compared to just 16% of those in the bottom 99%.  The article defines the one percenters as the households earning $500,000 per year or more.

This is one more data point that makes the case for higher education as the best way to increase your chances of financial success.  But there is more.  According to the article 49% of those earning $250,000 to $499,999 and 42% of those earning $150,000 to $249,000 also hold graduate degrees.  Only 27% of the richest 1% have less than a college degree, compared to 69% of the general population. 

Although there is no guarantee that an advanced degree will lead to higher earnings, and despite of the very high cost of obtaining such degrees, the data points to the fact that a higher education is still your best shot at trying to at a minimum make a decent living, and potentially make the kind of money that would put you in the top one percenters club.

But then again, if you don’t think you are up for shouldering the financial burden of the 99 percenters, and being criticized for being greedy and uncaring, perhaps you are better off just skipping college and camping out on public properties.

Increase Your Chances to Get to the Top 1% is a post from: Worldwide Success

Recently, Kiplinger published a Rags to Riches Millionaires story highlighting 5 people who turned their misfortunes in into millions.  You can read the article yourself, but let me just point out some of the advice from these folks who have lived through great turn-arounds in their lives:

Catherine Hughes, Founder and chairperson, Radio One:  “Sometimes the ones who love you the most will give you the worst business advice.”

Bert Jacobs, Co-Founder and CEO, Life is Good: “Try to shoot for a timeless business.”

Ali Brown, Entrepreneur, business consultant and publisher: “It’s important you seek out other business owners for information, advice, support and resources.”

Jill Blashack Strahan, Founder and CEO, Tastefully Simple: “Having goals is absolutely critical.”

Farrah Gray, Founder and CEO, Farrah Gray Publishing: “Keep your business small . . . niche yourself.”

Jesse Conners, CEO and Founder, PerppermintPark.com: “There is constantly some fire that you have to put out . . . Don’t let it discourage you.”

These are all great advice from real entrepreneurs who were once at the bottom.  But notice how many of them are giving back to the community.  That is important because the people who are struggling need help from those who have made it.  I understand the frustrations of the people that are struggling and their need to express their anger in a public way.  I just don’t think blaming it on successful people will get them very far.  Instead they should try to emulate all the right things that successful people do or have done to get where they are.  Listening carefully to the folks listed here is a great start.

Meet the Rags to Riches Millionaires is a post from: Worldwide Success

You probably have hear of Jim Collins, but if you have not, let me direct you to a few points of reference.  First, check out the previous articles we published on this Jim Collins Series:

Great Lessons on Success: Jim Collins Interviewed by Charlie Rose

Jim Collins on Motivation

Jim is the author of several bestselling books, including:

Great by Choice

Good to Great

How the Mighty Fall

Built to Last

Now that you have been introduced to Jim, let’s get back to the point of this article.  It is called the First Who Concept.  Remember this every time you are faced with a difficult challenge in business: First Who.  I’ll let Jim explain to you firsthand what First Who is all about.  Watch it below:

The First Who Concept by Jim Collins is a post from: Worldwide Success