How to be a billionaire

-Gordon Bethune
Chairman of the Board and CEO
Continental Airlines

Self-made billionaires all have one thing in common: they excel at making money. But hard work, thrift, and focus are only part of the story-you hold the rest of it in your hands. How to Be a Billionaire is the first comprehensive picture of the real strategies and tactics that built the great business for-tunes of modern times. Packed with engaging accounts of titans like Ross Perot, Richard Branson, Phil Anschutz, John D. Rockefeller, Wayne Huizenga, Bill Gates, J. Paul Getty, and Kirk Kerkorian, How to Be a Billionaire will show you principles that can increase your wealth and business acumen to the mogul level.

How to Be a Billionaire looks at the careers, the methods, and the minds of self-made billionaires to distill the common keys to titanic accumulations of wealth. Each chapter explores a specific strategy and brings it to life through extended profiles of past and present masters of the art of making money.

Do you think innovation is the best way to prosper in business' Sam Walton, founder of the Wal-Mart retail chain, would tell you otherwise. The key to Walton's success was supreme devotion to copying the methods of other successful discounters.

What could be less complicated than buying low and selling high? But the ascent of Warren Buffett, John Kluge, and Laurence Tisch to billionaire status depended on much more than an eye for good bargains.

And if you're looking to thrive by outmanaging the competition, look no further than Richard Branson. When the founder of Virgin Atlantic needed to reduce his staff by 400 people, 600 volunteered to take off a few months on sabbatical.

How to Be a Billionaire identifies the methods, beliefs, and behaviors every businessperson must understand and emulate to reach the pinnacle of riches. A manual for success that can benefit every aspiring tycoon, it is a fascinating read for anyone intrigued by wealth and how it's gotten.

MARTINS. FRIDSON is Managing
Director at Merrill Lynch & Company
and a member of Institutional Investor's
All-America Fixed Income Research Team.
He is the author of It Wad
a Very Good Year, Investment
iillusions, and Financial
Statetnent Analysis, all pub-
lished by John Wiley &
Sons. He serves on the
board of the Association
for Investment Manage-
ment and Research.