How to be a Billionaire in at age of 20

i was working at a financial firm in new

york city

with a bunch of very smart people

and i had a brilliant boss i much

admired

i went to my boss

and told him i was going to start a

company

selling books on the internet

he took me on a long walk in central

park

listened carefully to me

and finally said

that sounds like a really good idea

but it would be an even better idea for

someone who didn't already have a good

job

you can have a job

or you can have a career or you can have

a calling

and if you can somehow figure out how to

have a calling you have hit the jackpot

because that's the big deal

i met jeff bezos 25 years ago

and he told me dave i want you to invest

in my company what are you doing i'm

gonna start a bookstore in my garage

okay i'm gonna put it online people buy

buy online and i'm gonna ship out of my

garage but but if you invest in me dave

someday i'm gonna be the richest man in

the world i'll do over 100 billion

dollars

first of all there was no such thing as

a hundred billion dollars

25 years ago

statistically there's no such thing

countries didn't have a hundred our

national debt wasn't a hundred billion

dollars and this dude's telling me at 26

years old that he's gonna be the richest

man in the world because he has a garage

in the internet

that was his truth

no but he did not

he did not know it and neither did i but

the difference between him and i is i

was laughing scoffing and jesting at him

and he was already applauding himself

going at the right way at the perfect

time i'm gonna make as much as i can as

quickly and i'm sitting there going

there's no way this is gonna be a big

business

do something you're very

passionate about

and

don't

try to chase

what is kind of the hot passion of the

day

seen in that light it really was a

difficult choice

but ultimately

i decided i had to give it a shot

i didn't think i'd regret

trying and failing

and i suspected i would always be

haunted

by a decision to not try at all

after much consideration

i took the less safe path

to follow my passion

and i'm proud of that

choice as a young boy i had been a

garage inventor

i'd invented an automatic gate closer

out of cement filled tires

a solar cooker that didn't work very

well out of an umbrella and aluminum

foil baking pan alarms to entrap my

siblings

i'd always wanted to be an inventor

and she wanted me to follow my passion

it's a military phrase that i especially

love

and it says

slow is smooth and smooth is fast

and i have seen that

in every endeavor i've ever been in

that's the kind of thing that really

allows you to make progress you know you

get certain

gifts in life and you want to take

advantage of those

but you

i guess my advice on adversity and

success

would be

to

be proud not of your gifts but of your

hard work and your choices

so you know you may be the kinds of

gifts you get you know you might be

really good at math it might be really

easy for you that's a kind of gift

but practicing that math and taking it

to the next step

that could be very challenging and hard

and take a lot of sweat

that's a choice you can't really be

proud of your gifts

because they were given to you

you can be grateful for them and

thankful for them um and but your

choices

you choose to work hard

um you choose to do hard things

those are choices that you can be proud

of

you can choose we all get to choose our

life stories and

it's the choices that define us not our

gifts everybody in this room has many

gifts i have many gifts you can never be

proud of your gifts

because they're gifts they were given to

you you might be

you know tall and or you might be really

good at math or you might be extremely

beautiful or handsome or

you know they're or they're many gifts

and you can only be proud really of your

choices because those are the things

that you are that you're that you are

acting on and one of the most important

choices that each of us has

and you know this just as well as i do

is

you can choose

a life

of

ease and comfort or

you can choose a life of service and

adventure

and when you're 80

which one of those things you think

you're going to be more proud of you're

going to be more proud of having chosen

a life of service and adventure

never been a better time to be alive

i mean it's just an incredible the

amount of

inspiration that the world generates

for me and i think for a lot of people

it's just it's insane the amount of

change and invention and opportunity

your life

the life you author from scratch on your

own

begins

how will you use your gifts

what choices will you make

will inertia

be your guide

or will you follow your passions

will you follow dogma

or will you be original

will you choose a life of ease

or a life of service

and adventure

will you wilt

under criticism

or will you follow your convictions

will you bluff it out when you're wrong

or will you apologize

will you guard your heart

against rejection

or will you act

when you fall in love

will you play it safe or will you be a

little bit swashbuckling

when it's tough

will you give up

or will you be relentless

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will you be a cynic

or will you be a builder

will you be clever

at the expense of others

or will you be kind

every time you figure out some way of

providing tools and services that

empower other people to deploy their

creativity

you're really onto something you know

you're very lucky if you have a career a

lot of people end up with a job

if you don't love your work you're never

going to be great at it jules verne

mark twain galileo newton

all the curious from the ages

would have wanted to be alive

most of all right now

as a civilization

we will have so many gifts

just as you as individuals have so many

individual gifts as you sit before me

how you use these gifts and will you

take pride in your gifts

or pride in your choices