IS WEALTH THE BEST MEASUREMENT FOR SUCCESS?

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Today, we start with these faces of the top two richest people on earth today, Bezos and Gates.

Do you know that people that are up there, who have lots of money, name, position, and whatever else you can think of, have a very unusual measurement for success? You wouldn’t believe that they see success very different from the way the majority of the average man sees it.


This discovery will help you in many vital ways. It will give you a clue to how and why they have been able to not only access riches, but to do so with a sense of satisfaction and fulfillment. It will also enable you know what to focus on or stress in your daily pursuits that will culminate in what really brings you happiness.

Top Five Richest People in the World

As at today (2018), some of the richest people in the world include Jeff Bezos (the richest), the founder of Amazon.com, the largest online retailer; Bill Gates (second richest), founder of Microsoft; Warren Buffett (third richest), CEO of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., Bernard Arnault (fourth richest), the CEO of LVMH, the largest luxury or fashion company in the world; and Mark Zuckerberg (fifth richest), founder of Facebook.com.

Aliko Dangote, the CEO of the Dangote Group, is the richest black man in the world.

Richest People’s Best Measurement for Success

It may amaze you to hear that each of them does not define success primarily in terms of money or wealth. For instance, the yardstick Buffett uses to measure success is “whether the people close to you are happy and love you.” He sees success as a shared sense of the values of love, affinity, and happiness. He doesn’t see it as his net worth of well over $80 billion.

While writing about Mark Zuckerberg’s attitude to money, Ezra Callahan, a former Facebook employee, said that “I can tell you that when I worked with Mark Zuckerberg, money was certainly not his primary motivator. He lived an absurdly Spartan lifestyle. Well after the point that Facebook’s valuation passed $IB, Mark still lived in a small, crappy apartment and slept on a mattress on the floor. All he really cared about was work and he spent most of his waking hours at the office.” Is there any surprise that Zuckerberg is such a huge success today?

Bill Gates also believes that wealth is not the best measurement for success. Apart from the view of happiness which he shares with Buffett, he sees success in terms of adding value and leaving a legacy. While answering a question on success in an “Ask Me Anything” session on Reddit a few years ago, he said it had to do with making a difference through inventing something, or just helping people in need.

Dangote too is driven by a sense of customer satisfaction, to offer goods and services that meet essential human needs. As a matter of fact, one of his fundamental rules is that you must be honest and good to people. He believes that if you have a bad name, it will destroy you. That no one will touch you no matter how big you are.

Also, from Bezos to Ted Turner, founder of Cable News Network, CNN, and to Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Airlines, the story is the same. In an interview at the ideas Summit LA17, Bezos attributed his huge success to some secrets, namely, choice of a good wife and great marriage, focusing on one thing at a time, knowing where your talents are, and a spirit of adventure.

Branson says unequivocally that, “It’s a common misconception that money is every entrepreneur’s metric for success. It’s not, and nor should it be.”

What do all these point to? The important lesson here is that success is not interpreted primarily in terms of wealth by those the world sees as very successful. People who pursue wealth as the primary measurement for success miss the essential point of adding core value and delivering copious customer satisfaction, the things that bring the money. Wealth is the product of meeting the needs of the society either by way of satisfactory goods or services. Without fear of contradiction, we can say therefore, that riches are only a small percentage of success. They are not the ultimate measurement for success.

As a matter of fact, success is more of character, integrity, love, good relationships, peace of mind, joy, care for others, meeting needs and leaving legacies. Any day, anywhere, in success, character counts more than money. Brian Tracy even considers character as the greatest success factor.

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