How You Can Be Incredibly Wealthy and Still Be Broke…

RC — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 11:36:27 +0000

Did you know you can be extremely wealthy and still be broke?

Doesn’t sound like that makes sense, does it, unless you are talking about wealth in some abstract way, as in “my family and friends make me the wealthiest man in the world.”

Well, actually, you can.

One person who is apparently is Elon Musk, who is said to have been used as a model for Tony Stark in the recent Iron Man movies, and is best known for being a co-founder of Paypal, rocket scientist and founder of SpaceX, and co-owner/founder of Tesla Motors.

According to this article, he is broke- as in out of cash- relying on loans from friends for the appx. $200,000 he spends every month.

Apparently, he is going through a divorce and sank his last $35 million into Tesla Motors, leaving him extremely wealthy on paper, but without sufficient cash flow to pay the bills, so to speak.

You can have all of the assets in the world, but if you can’t pay your bills due to insufficient cash or cash flow, you will likely run into problems- at least most people will.

The article goes on to mention that Tesla Motors is valued at appx. $1.4 billion, and Space X has a contract with NASA for appx. $1.6 billion, meaning in reality, Mr. Musk is actually worth quite a bit.

Although things may be looking up- Tesla Motors had their stock IPO (initial public offering) yesterday in fact, which likely netted Musk in the neighborhood of $15 million dollars, so perhaps he can start to put his cash flow problems behind him.

There are a couple of money-related lessons can be learned from this- it is a dichotomy of sorts.

Cash flow is king. Most of us won’t be able to borrow large sums of money if we have all of our money tied up in investments, especially ones that might be business related- I know my friends don’t have enough to lend me $200k a month .

Many people who end up really wealthy follow their passions and are willing to take risks- big ones-with their money, investing in what they believe in. Putting their money where their mouth is, so to speak. I don’t know about you, but I would probably have trouble investing my last dollars into a business if I knew I would be running into major cash-flow problems. Would you?

photo credit: Sh4rp_i

Mark Cuban, Naked Pizza, and Being Passionate and Persistent about Your Dreams

RC — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 15:44:47 +0000

You may or may not know Mark Cuban, the billionaire owner of the Dallas Mavericks, but even if you do, you might not know he has a blog called Blog Maverick. A few of his good articles include How to Get Rich, and a longer post on Success and Motivation, where he talks a bit about his background and how he became rich and successful. Whether you like his style or not, you cannot argue with his success. He is someone who has worked hard to get where he is.

A month or so ago Mark decided to take helping small businesses and entrepreneurs upon himself by allowing his readers to “pitch” him their ideas including details on how much money they would need, when they would turn a profit, etc., with the Mark Cuban Stimulus Plan. He would then provide these people with funding if it met his criteria outlined in his post and he determined it was feasible and would work.

A few weeks later, he provided an update of some of the businesses and ideas he was investigating further and might work out a deal with to provide funding, and the one on the top of the list was called Naked Pizza, and based in New Orleans, where I live.

Basically, Naked Pizza claims to be the world’s healthiest pizza, with multi-grain crust, prebiotics and probiotics, all natural ingredients with fewer calories and more protein than regular pizza-all with a great taste. Sounds like a good idea to me! (Note- I have not tried Naked Pizza yet, but plan to really soon!)

I then ran across a story in the local paper, the Times Picayune, which shed a little more light on Mark Cuban and Naked Pizza’s business venture as well as the two guys who founded Naked Pizza.

I will say this. If Naked Pizza can make it in New Orleans, a city with some of the most delicious (and unfortunately pretty unhealthy) food in the world, they should have no trouble expanding their business enterprise.

What really struck me after reading the above articles, was:

That these are two people who really believe in what they are doing- they believe they are providing people with a better, healthier alternative to the way pizza is generally made now-they believe what they are offering is better for the health of their customers (Passion)
They are willing to work as hard as necessary, and do whatever it takes to succeed (Persistence)

As Mark Cuban said of the Naked Pizza guys : “There is nothing better than entrepreneurs that are willing to bust their ass for a product they believe in, that actually is a great product. That’s who I love to become partners with.”

That just about sums up how to succeed and achieve your dreams, in my opinion.

Think Your Way to Wealth » entrepreneurship

How You Can Be Incredibly Wealthy and Still Be Broke…

Mark Cuban, Naked Pizza, and Being Passionate and Persistent about Your Dreams