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Here's wishing all the readers of the San Diego Metropolitan much happiness and success in 1999, and may your high achievements spill right over into the new century.
For the past several years, it has been my great good fortune to write books about many of this nation's non-elected leaders — men and women who have shown how and why Americans frequently become the best in their fields worldwide.
These successful Americans have all of the barriers, sorrows and the daily aggravations that the rest of us have, yet they generally are happy within themselves. It is amazing how generous most of these people have been in sharing the secrets to their success.
Few of us will become as wealthy as investor Warren Buffett or innovator Bill Gates. Few of us will be as globally influential as General Electric Chairman Jack Welch or talk show host Oprah Winfrey. Yet following some of the guidelines these people offer, each of us can be excellent at living the life we have chosen to live.
Warren Buffett, billionaire investor and chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Corp., often speaks to college students. He suggests they play a little game, in which each of them has the opportunity to place a lifetime investment in a fellow classmate.
"... you could pick any one you wanted to and you had an hour to make the decision and you would get 10 percent of the earnings of that individual for the rest of their life. And you don’t pick the guy with the richest father in the class, everybody was starting from scratch. What would you think about in that hour in terms of who you would pick? Would you think about who had the highest grades in the class? Probably not. Would you think about who had the highest IQ in the class? Probably not. The best looking? Probably not. A whole bunch of things would go through your mind. You would be amazed at how most of you would settle on a relatively few individuals."
Buffett says you would, at this point, be evaluating each individual's character, integrity, persistence, the ability to get along with others and get things done, and so forth.
"You’re not thinking about things that are impossible for you to achieve yourself. You’re not thinking about who can jump seven feet; who can throw a football 65 feet; who could recite up to 300 digits. . . You’re thinking about a whole lot of qualities of character. The truth is that every one of those qualities is obtainable. They are largely a matter of habit."
Buffett insists that building wealth through investments is a relatively simple thing — choose solid companies with good, long-term earnings potential and stick with them.
"The market, like the Lord, helps them that help themselves," insists Buffett.
Bill Gates, founder and chairman of Microsoft Corp., may seem more difficult to emulate than Buffett, and considering Microsoft's current trouble with the U.S. Justice Department, some may not want to follow in his footsteps.
Nevertheless, People magazine has accurately described Gates as "to software what Edison was to the light bulb: part innovator, part entrepreneur, part salesman, and full-time genius." Gates does offer some important words of wisdom, especially to young people.
"Today if you had to guess somebody's approximate income," says Gates, "and you were limited to asking one polite question, a good one would be: 'What country do you live in?' That's because of the huge disparities in average wages from country to country.
"But a generation from now, if you want to guess someone's income, a more telling single question might be: 'What’s your education?'"
In the coming century, individuals will use technology to rise above the general level of their countrymen, says Gates. One of the characteristics of an educated person will be computer literacy.
Oprah Winfrey, the dazzling and continually transformed talk show host, agrees with Gates. She devotes much of her wealth and energy to helping young black Americans go to school.
"The door to freedom is education...," she says.
To the group of young women in Chicago that she has mentored, Oprah says:
"When we talk about goals and they say they want Cadillacs, I say, if you cannot talk correctly, if you cannot read or do math, if you become pregnant, if you drop out of school, you will never have a Cadillac, I guarantee it! And if you get Ds or Fs on your report card you’re out of this group. Don't tell me you want to do great things in your life if all you carry to school is a radio."
Oprah also points out that wanting to get rich isn’t enough:
"...part of the reason why I am as successful as I have been, [is] because success wasn’t the goal. The process was. I wanted to do good work."
And you must be passionate about your mission:
"I do everything to the absolute ultimate. I grow until I can’t grow anymore in a certain position. And then another door opens for me....I can’t stand to be bored."
Janet Lowe is the author of 10 books. The most recent are "Bill Gates Speaks: Wisdom from the World's Greatest Entrepreneur" and "Oprah Winfrey Speaks: Wisdom from the World's Most Influential Voice."
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