Ironically, I'm going to mention Alex Hormozi (who is very successful), but he said in an interview once that he spent something like $150k to talk to Grant Cardone and thought "I'm easily getting my ROI on that now because Grant's advice applies to someone in my position, where I have $100 MM. 10 years ago, when I was broke, the advice he's giving me now would have just put me further in insurmountable debt."
Most ultra-successful people somewhat forget the baseline that most people live in. For example, if they were to "restart with nothing", they usually assume that "nothing" still implies a good credit score, housing, food, healthcare, etc. which most of America is really spending all of their time trying to fight to secure. This translates to the out-of-touch and generally vague advice they give.
The ultra-successful, in my experience, are there because yes, they do have some strong, quantifiable qualities, but they also have massive, massive advantages. Not just being born into a home that gave them quality food, the best education, and all of the other things needed to be healthy in their developing years - but also the experience of their successful parents, the connections their family has, and many other things that I probably do not even know exist.
Some of these families that I know personally have it ridiculously well. Not only were they born with amazing portfolios, but they have great family jobs where they make $8k+ (after tax) every 2 weeks. And they get as much time off as they want - and you better believe they generally use it :)
Of course, they still find things to complain about - as do I.
There are a lot of brilliant and driven poor people. If they are lucky, they will get into the 10% or the 5%. If they win the lottery they make it into the .1%.
I think there is just some mental fatigue that happens when you read about other's success - maybe this is an unhealthy reaction, I do not know.
Failing to build a billion dollar startup does not exactly disprove the “massively succesful” point that GP made. Unless your criteria for “failure” is completely ridiculous.
I think of Kevin Systrom selling Instagram to Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook. Both success stories. Systrom went to high school at Middlesex, Zuckerberg to Phillips Exeter. I can think of many examples like this. Phillips Exeter high school starts at $47,000 a year, Middlesex high school starts at $54,000 a year.
So my best advice is have your parents give you $200,000 before you start high school so you can be off to a good start.
Pull like any tech big shot at random, their parents are rich and bought some part of their success. Gates’ folks had an IBM mainframe installed in his fucking high school.
Oh myGod, this kid Bill Gates is way ahead of the curve on computers.
Anyway, you're attacking a premise I didn't put forward - I didn't say his advice was not valuable, I said I feel that way when presented with articles like these by wildly successful people.
For other classes of successful people it makes more sense to read a biography (or autobiography if you feel the subject is intellectually honest) of successful people to understand how they think and operate. Many of these people won't be looking to give advice, but it is worthwhile to learn from them. For instance you can read the biography of Rockefeller, Carnegie, Franklin, and listen to "How I made this" featuring Michael Dell, and see the threads that are common amongst them. You may then compare that to yourself and understand the differences.
IMO there's plenty of value in the article, but it's an example of something you should critically analyze and verify against other sources before acting on.
It is up to you to be able to filter good information from bad. Wealthy founders do share some opinions that will help you be wealthy. However you need to learn to discriminate between good advice and bad advice. Your blanket ban seems poorly thought out to me.
Bonus unwelcome advice: you appear to be using the word successful to mean wealthy. Perhaps deconstruct your worldview a bit.
One of my favorite stories about Dabo Swinney, Clemson's football coach, came when he had just gotten the job and very few people had any confidence in him. ESPN rated him as a D+ hire at the time. He sat down at a coaches dinner event and a much older retired coach named Bill Curry was at his table. They struck up a conversation and Bill said, "Dabo, congratulations on the job! Can I give you 3 pieces of advice?"
And Dabo took out a pad and pencil from his pocket.
The advice was good, but the fact that Dabo was humble enough to actually take notes. Think about how much advice we just let go in one ear and out the other.
Now he's the best coach we've ever had and won 2 national titles.
If you change successful to be defined as people like OP, I believe a large majority of successful people are extremely lucky. Probably over 99.9%. They owe their success to being extremely fortunate in a combination of many factors, not limited to:
- Where they were born
- Who their parents were
- What food their parents gave them when they were kids
- What other types of nurture they received
- Where they went to school
- When they went to school
- Who they met at school
- Who their parents knew
- The time they were born
- The time they ...
You can go on and on here ...