Millionaire Focus on Larry Ellison

Welcome to tonight's Millionaire Focus. Tonight we are going to briefly look at Larry Ellison and perhaps glean some gems on how he became Forbes sixth richest person in the world. As of 2010 Larry Ellison has a personal wealth of about $27 billion.

For those of you who may not have heard of Larry Ellison, he is the co-founder and chief executive officer of Oracle Corporation. Oracle is a major enterprise software company that specializes in developing and marketing hardware systems and enterprise software products, in particular, database management systems. Larry Ellison came from humble beginnings, he was born in New York City, to a 19-year old unwed Jewish mother. He was given (at his mother's request) to his aunt and uncle in Chicago to raise and was adopted by them when he was 9 months old. He grew up in a middle-class Jewish neighborhood. He left the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign at the end of his second year, spent a summer in Northern California, then attended the University of Chicago for one term which is where he first encountered computer designing.

He became a computer programmer for Ampex Corporation where his primary project was crafting a large-scale database for the CIA. This database was code-named "Oracle". He then put up $2,000 of his own money to start Software Development Laboratories in 1977, in partnership with Robert Miner, his boss from Ampex. The new company was renamed Relational Software Inc in 1979. It was here that he prepared to release Oracle Version 2, a commercial database system. In an interesting note, he never released a Version 1 because Larry Ellison observed that people did not typically purchase Version 1 of any new software because Version 1's were typcially buggy. So, as a marketing tactic, his first release of Oracle was Version 2, which by the way, was as buggy as any Version 1 would be. This Version 2 sold well and in 1983 the company was again renamed, this time after it's flagship product, Oracle. Oracle Corporation went public in 1986, was on the verge of bankruptcy by 1990 but has since rebounded and has been profitable ever since.

Larry Ellison plays as hard as he works. He co-owns the sixth largest yacht in the world, named Rising Sun. He is also a financier of BMW Oracle Racing which in the 2007 America's Cup was the Challenger of Record. They were eliminated from the 2007 Louis Vuitton Cup challenger selection series in the semi-finals. On February 14, 2010, Ellison's yacht, (Ellison was a crew member for this race) USA 17, won the second race of the 33rd America's Cup. Ellison and his BMW Oracle team became the first challengers to win a "deed of gift" match. The Cup returned to American shores for the first time since 1995.

Larry Ellison is also a licensed pilot and has owned several aircraft, including fighter jets. He owns many exotic cars and has styled his home in Woodside, California, after feudal Japanese architecture, complete with a man-made 2.3 acre lake. In 2004 and 2005, Larry Ellison purchased more than 12 properties in Malibu, California. His entertainment system cost $1 million and includes a rock concert-sized video projector at one end of a drained swimming pool.

As a balance, Larry Ellison has also made considerable charitable donations to various organizations. In 2004 Forbes noted that Ellison had donated $151,092,103 in the preceeding year, or about 1% of his estimated personal wealth. In August of this year, it has been reported that Larry Ellison is one of the 40 billionaires who has signed "The Giving Pledge". Ellison wrote: "Many years ago, I put virtually all of my assets into a trust with the intent of giving away at least 95% of my wealth to charitable causes. I have already given hundreds of millions of dollars to medical research and education, and I will give billions more over time. Until now, I have done this giving quietly - because I have long believed that charitable giving is a personal and private matter."

Hopefully, as we all work towards our own personal Millionaire and Billionaire status, we too will remember to be generous with our charitable contributions. We all have the ability to come from humble beginnings and work to become financially free. Hopefully there were some tidbits of information from Larry Ellison's examples that you will be able to use in your business ventures.

If you are searching for a business opportunity to get involved in, please feel free to visit our website for some second income ideas. We would be more than willing to answer your questions regarding starting a home-based business or how to begin to build a second income.

Until tomorrow...

Millionaire Focus

Welcome to this week's Millionaire Focus. Tonight we are going to briefly cover one of Forbes' Richest People, Isaac Perlmutter. Most likely many of you have not heard of this person, but if you were involved in watching Marvel Comics over the last 7 years. He is noted as a a new billionaire who flipped Marvel Entertainment to Disney for $4 billion dollars. Isaac netted nearly $900 million in cash and 20 million shares of Disney in the transaction.

We strive to bring you not just interesting people to read about in this Millionaire Focus but also struggle to locate millionaires who are self-made. Isaac Perlmutter is on such billionaire. Despite the large deal with Disney, Isaac Perlmutter has kept a very low profile. Apparently he is so shy of publicity that he attends movie premiers in disguise. He has gotten so good at disguising himself that at the premier of Iron Man not even his close friends recognized him.

It has been difficult gathering information of Perlmutter's early years other than that he was born in 1945 in what was to become Israel. He fought during the Israeli Six Day War in 1967 and soon after came to America with about $250 in his pocket. When first in America, he would sell toys and beauty products on the street. His first fortune was made selling surplus goods to dollar stores after he taught himself how to read balance sheets. Isaac Perlmutter had a knack for finding distressed businesses and at one point owned a controlling interest in Victor Kiam's electric razor manufacturer Remington Products.

His comfort was in the toy market though. He first encountered his future partner, Avu Arad, during a dispute over royalty payments. In 1990 they teamed up to run Toy Biz and struck a deal with Marvel's then owner Perelman to sell action figures based on Marvel characters. When Marvel got into financial problems, Perlmutter and Arad jumped in to acquire Marvel. Even after the acquisition of Marvel Entertainment by the Walt Disney Company came in 2009, he remains CEO of Marvel Entertainment.

Perlmutter shuns the trappings of wealth, with his only known indulgence being tennis. He likes to observe and absorb what is going on around him without needing to be in the middle. He seems to be the kind of person you wouldn't notice in a room. He is well known for penny-pinching and he watches all costs, no matter how small. Even though penny-pinching can be thought of as a negative, Perlmutter was able to help turn around Marvel with his ability to watch costs. One colleague notes that Perlmutter may now be a mogul of enormous wealth, "but he knows the value of a buck."

Hopefully you enjoyed this week's Millionaire Focus and found some tidbits to help you with your own business dealings. As you can see, being in the right place at the right time, along with staying alert can possibly bring you from rags to riches.

Until tomorrow...

Millionaire Spotlight

I know I have been remiss lately on getting the Millionaire Spotlight out on Friday evenings, and I am really and truly working to improve upon that. The unfortunate case of why the Millionaire Spotlight did not appear this Friday, or even Saturday was because I was more than a little under the weather and unable to sit up long enough to do a proper job of posting. Now that I am again back in the virtual saddle, please enjoy your Millionaire Spotlight...

Tonight we are going to take a brief look at who Forbes rated as the Tenth richest man in America, Michael Bloomberg. Michael Rubens Bloomberg was born on Valentine's Day, (February 14) 1942 and currently is the Mayor of New York City. His current net worth in 2010 (when Forbes generated it's list) is $18 billion dollars. He is the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg, L.P., a financial news and information services media company.

Michael Bloomberg is the grandson of Russian Jewish immigrants and was raised by middle class parents in Medford, Massachusetts. Michael Bloomberg was taught at an early age the values of hard work and civic responsibility. He worked his way through Johns Hopkins University by taking loans and working as a parking attendant during the summer months. He then received his MBA from Harvard Business School. He was ultimately hired by Salomon Brothers to work on Wall Street where he oversaw equity trading and sales and ultimately was in charge of their information systems. When he was fired from Saloman Brothers, he was provided a $10 million severance package which he then used to set up his own information systems company.

His vision of a good information systems company was one that would use emerging technology to bring transparency and efficiency to both buyers and sellers in financial securities. His first customer was Merrill Lynch where his new company, Innovative Market Systems installed 22 of the new terminals. His ultimately renamed his company Bloomberg L.P. in 1986. By 1987, this company had installed 5,000 terminals. As of 2009, Bloomberg L.P. has more than 250,000 terminals worldwide. They have subsequently expanded to include ancillary products and a radio network.

As Mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg declines to receive a city salary, accepting $1.00 annually for his services. Today he still maintains a public listing in the New York City phone directory, does not reside in the official mayor's mansion but lives in his own home on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. He claims to be a frequent rider of the New York City Subway. His substantial net worth has allowed him to engage in many large philanthropic endeavors to include large donations to Johns Hopkins University, Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, World Lung Foundations and the World Health Organization.

When the financial crisis begin to affect the country in 2008, Mayor Bloomberg launched a Five Borough Economic Opportunity Plan to bring New York City through the downturn as quickly as possible. This plan has helped the City of New York avoid the level of job losses that many experts had originally forecasted. He continues to strive towards making New York City the safest large city in America and launched a coalition of mayors and business leaders from across the country to work on sensible immigration reform.

Again, we have in Mayor Michael Bloomberg a person who came from humble beginnings worked hard and through dedication, seeking opportunities and smart investing became the Forbes 10th riches person in America in 2010. You can also see that Michael Bloomberg, like the other Millionaires we have Spotlighted, gives back to the community through his philanthropic activities. Hopefully, as we all grow closer to becoming millionaires we too will remember to give back to the community that helped us along our way.

With luck, we will be able to post our next Millionaire Spotlight this Friday evening...

Until tomorrow...

Millionaire Spotlight

Well, it is Friday and we are back on track for our Millionaire Spotlight. Tonight we are going to look at the Forbes Ranked 18th richest American (and ranked 43rd in the world), Jeff Bezos. Each week we spotlight a millionaire and see what business points we can learn from these people. Many of the millionaires we spotlight started from humble beginnings, like you and I. The difference is in how they managed to build their fortunes. Hopefully as we continue to spotlight various Millionaires both in the United States and around the world, you will find some pearl of wisdom that will help you too to build your personal business into a million dollar industry.

Have you heard of Jeff Bezos? He is a self-made millionaire and is the founder of Amazon.com. Jeff Bezos was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico January 12, 1964. When Jeff was born, his mother was still in her teens. Her marriage to his birth father lasted a little more than a year. His mother eventually remarried by the time Jeff turned 4. His stepfather was a Cuban refugee and had escaped to the U.S. alone at the age of 15. His stepfather, Mike Bezos, worked his way through the University of Albuquerque and ultimately became an engineer for Exxon. Jeff's grandparents had a 25,000 acre ranch where Jeff spent much of his summers working.

Early on, Jeff Bezos showed great mechanical aptitude. He developed many scientific interests and continuously worked on a variety of science projects. It was in high school that Jeff discovered and fell in love with computers. He entered Princeton University planning on studying physics, but ended up returning to his first love, computers. He graduated with a degree in computer science and electrical engineering.

After graduation, Jeff Bezos began work on Wall Street, where the demand for computer science was growing quickly. He remained in the financial realm, first with Bankers Trust, and then at D.E. Shaw which specialized in applications of computer science to the stock market. It was at D.E. Shaw where in the spring of 1994 Jeff discovered that Internet usage was increasing by 2,300 percent a year. He saw a new opportunity for business and immediately began considering possibilities. As he searched various mail order companies, he found that books had no comprehensive mail order catalog. Since a comprehensive book catalog was never economically feasible to mail, the Internet became a perfect tool. A vast book database could be maintained, and a limitless number of people could access that book database. That was the beginning of the concept of Amazon.com.

After more research with booksellers to learn everything he could about the book business, Jeff and his wife decided to go into business for themselves and compile a comprehensive book catalog. He and his wife decided to name the new company Amazon, for the seemingly endless South American river with numberless branches. They set up their new business in a 2-bedroom home with computers on tables made from door blanks. July 16, 1995 Jeff Bezos opened Amazon.com to the world. Within 30 days, with no actual advertising, Amazon had sold books in all 50 states and 45 foreign countries. By September of that year, it had sales of $20,000 a week.

In order to continue growth, Jeff increased his market share as quickly as possible, at the expense of initial profits. He wanted to be more than "Earth's biggest bookstore" and really wanted to be "Earth's biggest anything store". Throughout this growth, Jeff Bezos focused on his 6 core values - customer obsession, ownership, bias for action, frugality, high hiring bar and innovation. His company vision was to be "the world's most customer-centric company. The place where people come to find and discover anything they might want to buy online."

Jeff's focus on his Six Core Values is something we can all apply to our own businesses. These are not difficult concepts, and implemented honestly and consistently will help you to build and grow your home based business too. As you can see, Jeff is always looking for more innovations to provide his customers an even better buying experience. Amazon.com has become a household name. Another wise action that Jeff Bezos took was to reinvest in his company. Instead of spending the early company profits on personal "toys", Jeff reinvested those profits back into his company to continue to grow and develop it. We can all take a page from Jeff's playbook and most likely make our own businesses more profitable also.

Good luck in continuing to grow your small or home based business. Hopefully these Millionaire Spotlights will provide some spark of innovation, or inspiration for you to move your business to the next level.

If you are looking for some second income opportunities and have no idea what you might want to do, our website might be of some assistance. Please feel free to e-mail us with any of your questions. We would love to hear from you.

Until tomorrow...

Millionaire Spotlight

Tonight we are going to take a brief look at who Warren Buffett is and why he is in our Millionaire Spotlight. I am sure many of you have heard of Warren Buffett, his name has been in the news for years, you may have heard some of his comments on the economy and investing. Since he is so often quoted and watched in the news, I thought it would be beneficial to find out more about who Warren Buffett is and why he is so often quoted.

Warren Edward Buffett is an American investor, industrialist and philanthropist. He is one of the most successful investors in the world and is currently ranked the third richest person in the world by Forbes in 2010, after Carlos Slim Helu, and Bill Gates. Warren Buffett is called the "Oracle of Omaha" and is well known for his value investing philosophy and for his personal frugality. As a child, Warren Buffett was interested in making and saving money. He used to go door to door selling gum, Coca-Cola or magazines. He worked in his grandfather's grocery store for some time. While in high school, Buffett and a friend pooled their money to purchase3 a used pinball machine which they they put in a local barber shop. Within a few months, they purchased several more pinball machines and placed those in different barber shops.

By 1962, Warren Buffett officially became a millionaire, mainly due to his partnerships which had an excess of $7,178,500 (of which $1.025 million belonged to him). Is is currently ranked second richest man in the United States after donating billions of dollars to charity in 2009. His net work is up to $47 billion. What is interesting is that his children will not inherit a significant amount of his wealth. He wants to provide just enough for his kids so that they feel they could do anything, but not too much so that they don't do anything. Warren Buffett has been very wise in his investing and does not invest unless he has researched the opportunity. He does take calculated risks, but again, not unless he has carefully studies the particular company's management along with the company's Income Statement and Balance Sheet. It is not the numbers alone that interest Warren Buffett.

The lessons with Warren Buffett are very similar to what we have seen with other millionaires; even though you earn a lot of money, it is not necessary to spend all of it. The key to becoming wealthy is to earn money, save most of it and reinvest it again to continue building profits and income. In 1957 he purchased a 5-bedroom stucco home for $31,500 in 1957 and still lives there today.

If you are looking for second income opportunities in order to further grow your savings, we may have something that will work well for you. After reviewing our website, please feel free to e-mail us with any questions regarding the income opportunities listed. Hopefully you enjoyed this week's Millionaire spotlight. If you are interested in learning more about Warren Buffett (there is a lot of information that cannot be easily encapsulated here), there is a wealth of information and biographies on the Internet.

Until tomorrow...

Millionaire Focus tonight on Felix Dennis

Tonight is another installment of Millionaire Focus. The goal with these weekly spotlights is to help provide inspiration and learning to those who are working at their own businesses. The Millionaires we look at had humble beginnings and became millionaires. Tonight we are going to briefly look at who Felix Dennis is and what his views are on developing a successful business. This is week two of our Millionaire focus, last week we focused on Elon Musk, the founder of PayPal. Felix Dennis had developed and owned Maxim magazine, which is the world's biggest selling men's lifestyle magazine.

According to Felix Dennis, he had wasted a good deal of his youth playing in R&B bands. He then became involved in co-editing and selling a counter-culture magazine in England, "OZ" in 1971. He and two other people ended up getting arrested for "Conspiracy to deprave and corrupt the Morals of the Young of the Realm". (Basically the government felt the magazine was obscene) After a lengthy trial he and his co-conspirators were found not guilty of conspiracy. In 1973 he went to set up his own publishing company, Dennis Publishing and begin publishing such items as Kung-Fu Monthly and Cozmic Comics. Due to the rise in popularity of Bruce Lee, Kung-Fu Monthly brought early success to Felix Dennis.

Dennis kept an eye out for emerging cultures, and set up personal computing magazines MacUser and Personal Computer World. He also launched Computer Shopper and PC World. He also diversified his income by creating a mail order company. The business model was extremely simple. It kept operating costs to a minimum and used direct marketing through high quality catalogs.

Felix Dennis is also an accomplished poet, and has written over 1,000 poems. He started his poetry after a "life-threatening illness". He has also published two books, "How to Get Rich", and the sister book, "88 The Narrow Road". His views on business are very helpful for those of us working to grow our own businesses.

As we have stated in prior blogs, Felix Dennis believes that you can never get rich working for anybody else. What is refreshing about the book is that Dennis provides practical advice for beginning businesses. He focuses on maintaining ownership of your own company. He feels that the key to eventual riches is maintaining that ownership. The reason is, when you ultimately sell your company, if you own most of it, you will receive most of the monies on the sale.

He admits that being in your own business will include a lot of failing and groveling, but you need to stay driven. He believes that if you are not driven by desire, you should not attempt to create and grow your own business. Even with your drive, you should still keep your eyes open to the possibility that your idea may not be good. You need to look at what the numbers in your business is telling you and continue to talk with other entrepreneurs.

What was interesting is that Felix Dennis strongly believes that you should develop passions outside of your business. It will help provide balance and grounding for you and your business. He believes that you should ultimately give away all the money you earned, help others get started. In 2008 his was worth somewhere between $400 and $900 million.

He believes that if you want to be rich, first stop being so frightened.

We can all use that advice in our own businesses. Felix Dennis has some wonderful observations about how to become successful, with hard work, cunning and a solid work ethic.

If you are looking to start up your own business and don't know where to begin, please check our out our website. We may have something that will interest you. We are also available for advice and guidance. You can always reach us through e-mail at hawgwash1@yahoo.com . We would love to help you to become the next self-made millionaire.

Until tomorrow...