The image of millionaires we learned about in the media as stuffy men with silver hair is now completely out of style. There are more and more millionaires who work differently and build their own wealth at an early age. The internet has given young people a platform to build a business that can reach around the world and have huge impact quickly. The faster these companies grow the more money they’re making for their young owners. The majority of millionaires under 30 share some of the same attributes that helped them become successful. Check out these common traits of young millionaires and see if these can help you reach your full potential.
1. Don’t think big, think huge
Along with their youth these young millionaires also have big dreams. They don’t look at ideas and think about ways they can’t work, they think about ways they can make an idea into something that can change the world. They look for possibilities in ideas that can scale up rapidly and become large companies, then dive in.
2. They’re passionate about what they do
There is an old saying that if you are passionate about what you do, you never truly work a day in your life. Young millionaires have taken this to heart and build their businesses about things they are deeply passionate about. They don’t just have an idea and think about how they can make money on it, they think about how their idea can change the lives of the people that use their product.
3. They’re independent thinkers
Young entrepreneurs don’t like to be told they can’t do something. They look at their idea and they think about ways that obstacles can be overcome. When Steve Jobs started Apple he was told by many around him that there was no way he could build a computer that would beat IBM. He took their negativity and thought of ways that IBM computers weren’t performing well for consumer and came out with the original Macintosh. Young millionaires are thinking outside the box and looking for solutions to problems.
4. They move fast
Life on the internet moves quickly and young millionaires know that there are thousands of others who are looking to join their ranks. Urgency is incredibly important to the young entrepreneur because there is a good chance that your great idea is very similar to somebody else’s great idea and the one that will win is the first to hit the market. You can probably think of dozens of tech companies that have appeared seemingly overnight and become huge, but that’s a carefully thought out style of doing business that young millionaires have mastered.
5. Work with the best people
An exceedingly small number of millionaires have ever become rich on their own. They have the vision, the drive, and are great motivators and know that the key to their success is to put together a team that can’t be beat. These entrepreneurs can look at their business idea and know what strengths they will need to have in their employees to make their idea happen. Knowing where your strengths lie and where your weaknesses are can help you to better understand what types of people to surround yourself with who can fill in the gaps in your own expertise.
6. They are incredibly focused
Being focused is important to many tasks in your daily life, but young millionaires have become successful because they’ve mastered this skill. Zuckerberg, Jobs, and Gates all had ideas that they were passionate about and drilled in on their businesses and focused their energy on the larger goal. For example, Steve Jobs had an idea as a young man to create the best consumer computers on the market. As he became successful selling computers his vision expanded to revolutionizing the way we listen to music with the iPod and then how we use cell phones with the iPhone. At every step he made decisions that supported his unwavering focus on making well designed products that changed the way people lived.
7. They aren’t afraid of failure
Young millionaires probably didn’t become rich on their first great idea. The key to success as a young entrepreneur is not to fear failure, but to charge headfirst into the unknown and push your idea as far as you can take it. Hopefully your business is a hit and you become successful, but if it isn’t working you will know when to walk away. When these entrepreneurs do fail they don’t get discouraged, they look at their failures and try to find ways to improve their ideas and themselves so they can succeed on their next business.
8. Build on success
You may think that if you made $20 million dollars after selling your hot new startup at 30 you’d just retire. However, what really sets young millionaires apart is that they don’t aim to retire at 30 at all, they want to turn their success into more success. After developing a successful business these young people meet more successful people and begin to think about their next idea. Whether they pursue that idea within their own successful company or spin off and start something new, they’re looking for a bigger challenge and will leverage their success to help them get it.
9. They learn often and enjoy criticism
When you stop learning you become complacent and young millionaires try to stay ahead of this bad habit. They want to learn about their company, their employees, how their employees view the company and where they can improve. They want to get feedback from every angle available and learn about how and why people feel the way they do. Understanding your consumer is paramount to success and the best way to do that is to be open minded and learn as much as you can.