How this guy became the richest in the world

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• 💸 Billionaire Billy

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BILLIONAIRE BILLY

Do you ever look at billionaires and wonder how the hell they got there in the first place? Cause I do all the time.

I’ve recently started reading a lot of different billionaire bios, but only certain ones. If they inherited it, I immediately cross them off the list *cough, cough the Walton family (Walmart)*

You can learn a lot from self-made billionaires. There’s obviously some luck but they’re usually pretty smart and understand one aspect of business extremely well.

The aspect of business I'm going to be talking about today is brand. That’s your first hint. Here’s 5 others, try to guess who it is!

This person:

• Was approached by Steve Jobs seeking advice on Apple

• Has played multiple tennis matches with Roger Federer

• Lives in a 150-year-old castle

• Last year his company did $86B in revenue

• Is currently the richest person in the world

Any guesses?

If you said Bernard Arnault, good guess. He’s the "Louis Vuitton guy".. or the one who has a 46% stake in LVMH. The company that owns:

• Louis Vuitton

• Christian Dior

• Sephora

• Marc Jacobs

• Fendi

• Tiffany & Co

Pretty much any luxury brand you can think of, he probably owns it. And now it makes sense why he’s currently sitting as the #1 richest person in the world at $227B.

So what can we learn from Bernard?I think there’s two really big things. But first, let me give you the cliff notes version of his background and how he actually gained 227 freakin billion dollars!

At 21, he graduated with an engineering degree and joined his dad’s construction company. By 25, he was the CEO.

Right when he joined, he said “Let’s expand”. Already has an entrepreneur's mindset and gets into real estate building townhomes, makes a bunch of money, and sells the business in the early 80s for $25M.

Here comes the interesting part.

He now has this money and is looking for his next thing.

He’s visiting New York and is talking with his cab driver who didn't know who the President of France was, but oddly enough, knew everything about Christian Dior - a brand that really hadn’t taken off back then.

This got Bernard thinking, “This guy doesn’t know who the President of France is but knows a French brand?? I need to look into this.'' fast forward a few years later and he raises money to buy Dior for $75M.

At the time, Dior was extremely mismanaged, the founders were close to bankruptcy and management was a mess - something that’s common with family-owned businesses.

So he gutted the company, hired new people and turned it around. I can’t find any numbers on how much Dior was making back then but in 2009 they were doing $19.5B in revenue and last year they did $86.8B - almost a 5x.

This guy knows one thing really well - brand.If you can get brands to resemble premium in people’s minds, you can charge whatever you want. Like $5,000 for a little purse.

Bernard knows this and is famous for saying “Luxury goods are the only way to make luxury margins.”

So that’s #1 - Brand is an extremely powerful thing. If you build strong brands, you build strong margins.

#2 is taking risks. And you’ll find this common with most billionaires. Trying to build a business is hard and scary. I remember when I told one of the biggest law firms in Chicago that I was turning down their full-time offer after college.

I was scared as hell (I even recorded that day to look back on it) but I’ve made more in social media than I could have ever imagined. It pays to take risks.

Bernard was buying a distressed company on the brink of bankruptcy, it could have easily gone under if he didn’t execute.

My view on risk: taking them is risky, but not taking them is even riskier because you never give yourself the chance for that outsized reward.

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MEME OF THE DAY

AI can now make memes. Not bad 😂😂

That's all I got for ya today folks!

DISCLAIMER: None of this is financial advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. Please be careful and do your own research.