🌻3 Qualities of My Classmate Who Built a Million-Dollar Company

It’s not the smartest one who wins.

Looking back on my school days, it was crystal clear Andrew would be wealthy. It was the question of ‘when’, not ‘if’.

Simply said, he had a wealthy mindset.

1. Efficient Laziness

Andrew wasn’t the type to grind. He was downright lazy.

But he still managed to get good notes. How he got them didn’t matter.

He once put a note against his name in the teacher’s journal when the teacher wasn’t in the classroom.
Cribbing off his classmates’ work was always an option.
To give his mental abilities credit, he was a quick learner when he was interested in the matter. He could pass tests on his own too.
Andrew could find a way to execute any task.

This quality transitioned into his adult life. What was an effective executor going to do professionally?

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Start a business, of course.

But he didn’t do that after graduating. He did a Ph.D. in chemistry first.

It wasn’t clear why he wanted to pursue an academic career. I understood when he received the title and set up an oil-spill cleanup company.

He knows that his staff are his biggest assets. So he hired the best he could find.

A brilliant chemist is on his team, whose Ph.D. is in oil spills.
An environmental engineer with experience in the Arctic region ensures his company abides by the law.
A good sales manager spreads the word about the company’s services.
Andrew appears to follow former Ford and Chrysler executive Lee Iacocca’s motto:

“I hire people brighter than me and then I get out of their way” — Lee Iacocca

Andrew told me recently about a $1 million takeover bid from an oil-mining company. He isn’t interested in selling his business, though.

2. Captivating Talk

Professor Thomas Harrel from Stanford University studied his former MBA students 20 years after graduation to figure out “what kind of men became leaders of American business”.

One common characteristic among the most successful entrepreneurs was “verbal ability”. They could easily talk to anyone, be that a CEO, a colleague, a secretary, or a janitor.

Such was my classmate.

Andrew could strike up a conversation and get everyone’s attention within several seconds.

He embodies the principle “it’s not what you say, it’s how you say it”. He’d make a good writer too.

Andrew wasn’t born with this quality. He thought in secondary school that being able to talk to anyone was cool and made a conscious effort to speak to people anywhere he could.

He had a strategy to attract people.

He paid attention to how others talked. He’d greet and say goodbye to them in the way they were most used to.
He made sure people noticed him immediately. He’d say something simple at the beginning. It was either smart or funny.
Once he had their attention, he knew he “hooked them in”. Like what kind of jokes they would respond to. He was the center of attention.
“Communication — the human connection — is the key to personal and career success.” — Paul J. Meyer

Andrew was quite a character who could make 5 people laugh within 20 seconds. But not in a clown-like way. His jokes were smart.

3. Iron Discipline

Andrew is an athlete. Our Physical Education teacher noticed him in the 2nd grade. Andrew took to badminton when he was 8.

My classmate started slowly but became a pro by 15. He used to train 5–6 times a week at that age.

Children take hardships for granted. They have no point of comparison. It’s good to build character early in life.

While his classmates were wasting their time smoking and drinking, Andrew was building discipline. It paid off big time later.

Andrew developed an unbreakable determination to succeed.

He didn’t win huge international championships. But that’s not the point.

Doing sports at a young age is laying the foundation for success in adult life.

Competing in sports prepared Andrew for life challenges. His start-up wasn’t successful from the get-go. It took him 4 years to turn his company profitable.
My former classmate is extremely confident, which contributes to his charisma. People fight for his attention.
Andrew has good time management. He meets potential clients in a cafe at 8:00 am, talks to his staff and supervises operations shortly after lunch, and meets his partners in the late afternoon.
He goes to the gym to stay healthy, although he sometimes sacrifices his training routine in favor of his family.
Andrew has always wanted to build a successful business.

He didn’t know how to start a company, let alone run it. But he started anyway and figured out the details along the way.

Once you know your goal, it comes down to discipline to achieve it. That’s what Andrew did.

“Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment.” — Jim Rohn

Read also: How to finally become the person you’re capable of becoming

Bottom Line

Being successful is a choice. Either you’re ready to put in the work or not.

My former classmate shaped himself into a success story.

He surrounds himself with professionals to achieve his goals.
He excels at interacting with others.
He built an unshakeable determination.
Andrew is a role model for aspiring entrepreneurs.

🟢Contributed by Denis Gorbunov

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