Many people want to become rich. What character traits do you need to have in order to become very wealthy in your working life? Insight author Rainer Zitelmann, himself an entrepreneur, interviewed 45 people who have ten million euros or more in their accounts.
Sabine Moldenhauer: Mr. Zitelmann, how did you come up with the idea for this book?
Rainer Zitelmann: In 2015, I wrote a book on the topic of "Becoming and Staying Rich" and was looking for scientific insights. Unfortunately, while there are many studies on the "inequality of wealth," etc., there is little research on the genesis of wealth at the individual level. An exception was the dissertation of a scientist, published under the title "Ways to Wealth." Here, 472 wealthy individuals were interviewed. However, these individuals had a median of only 1.4 million euros. I contacted the supervisor of this work, Professor Wolfgang Lauterbach from the University of Potsdam, and we developed the idea of a qualitative scientific study of the group of individuals who have a net worth of at least two to three-digit million euros. This led to the dissertation, which was published in 2017 as a book titled "Psychology of the Super-Rich," which will soon also be released in America, England, and China.
Who impressed you the most? What defines a super-rich person?
One of the interviewees who impressed me was someone with hundreds of millions of euros in wealth, but who only had a poor secondary school leaving certificate and was also dyslexic. Or Theo Müller - one of the few interviewees who agreed to have their anonymity lifted - who started with a dairy business with four employees and now employs 21,000 people and owns several billion euros. By the way, he also only has a secondary school leaving certificate. Academic education, as one of the results of the work, is not an important factor in becoming very wealthy. It became increasingly clear that personality traits play the decisive role.
Among the 45 interviewees, there was only one woman. Is this a coincidence or rather a sad reality?
By the way, this woman also impressed me with her life story. She acquired her wealth as an entrepreneur and investor in the real estate segment. The fact that there was only one woman is not a coincidence. Take a look at the lists of the richest Germans or the richest people in the world. The women you find there are mostly widows or daughters of wealthy entrepreneurs. However, in my work, I excluded individuals whose wealth mainly came from inheritances. The vast majority of my interviewees were self-made entrepreneurs. Some had inherited a little, but then significantly increased that inheritance. You can't learn anything from someone who became rich mainly through inheritance.
Five character traits are analyzed. You conclude that the majority of the high-net-worth individuals surveyed are very open to new experiences and conscientious, extroverted, and emotionally stable. Additionally, they are more conflict-oriented than distinctly agreeable. Do you think these traits mutually reinforce each other?
No. These are based on the Big Five model developed in personality research: openness to new experiences, agreeableness, neuroticism, conscientiousness, and extraversion. These variables are largely independent of each other. I supplemented them with a sixth factor, namely, risk-taking, and a seventh, nonconformity. As expected, the super-rich stand out for their above-average risk-taking and nonconformity, extreme psychological stability, and openness to new experiences.
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"Sales talent playsa crucial role inentrepreneurial andfinancial success"
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You are a historian, author, entrepreneur, real estate expert, and a multimillionaire yourself. What parallels can you draw between the lives of your interviewees and your own? What character traits do you possess?
I also took the personality test with 50 questions that my interviewees filled out and published the results in the appendix to my autobiography "Wenn du nicht mehr brennst, starte neu!" (If you no longer burn, start anew!). I was somewhat surprised that agreeableness, which is often not very pronounced among entrepreneurs in general, was even lower in me than in all 45 interviewees. I am a conflict type, not a harmony person. Furthermore, the results were similar to those of other wealthy individuals, with low neuroticism (high psychological stability) and extremely high conscientiousness. Like many others, I have a tendency towards nonconformity, meaning taking one's own path and swimming against the tide. However, my risk-taking is much less pronounced than that of my interviewees.
I have always been a rebel. In my school days, I was a Maoist. I had to leave school because I continued to distribute my newspaper "Rotes Banner" despite explicit prohibition. Later, as the mainstream became increasingly leftist, I became a national liberal. But not only politically am I a nonconformist, but also in my private life and as an investor. I became rich because I made investments completely against the mainstream, swimming against the tide. For example, in 2004, I bought a multi-family house in Berlin-Neukölln very cheaply for one million euros. At that time, everyone thought I was crazy to buy a house there. Eleven years later, I sold it for 4.2 million euros when everyone suddenly wanted to invest in Neukölln. This is just one example. The nonconformity that often caused me problems in intellectual circles made me wealthy as an investor.
In your book, you dedicate a whole chapter to chance and luck. What role do these factors play in the lives of the "super-rich" and in your own life?
I am not a big believer in using luck or chance as an explanation for success. No one has only luck or only misfortune throughout their entire life. For most people, it somehow evens out. More important than luck or chance is recognizing the opportunities that arise from them and then taking action on them. Many successful people still attribute luck as an explanation for their success. Often, it is not questioned why they do so. I also address this in my book: firstly, it is a defense against envy when someone casually says, "I just got lucky." This seems much more sympathetic than, for example, pointing out that one is more capable than others. And secondly, attributing success to luck is an admission of embarrassment because successful people often do not even know why they were successful in the first place. Luck is winning the lottery. And most lottery winners lose the money again because they do not have the mental prerequisites.
What all your interviewees have in common is that their parents were in some way self-employed, had a business, or were involved in one in which they grew up. What was absorbed with the mother's milk here and contributed more to later success than education or study? What about those who grew up differently, is there a way to compensate? What could this look like?
This does not apply to everyone, but to surprisingly many: Six out of ten interviewees had self-employed parents. This proportion is ten times higher than in the general population. However, these parents were not usually wealthy. Sometimes they were small business owners, one owned a butcher shop, another two or three retail stores. The parents were thus role models that showed their children an alternative to being an employee, for which they are prepared in school. But you do not need to have parents who are self-employed to become rich later on. In the interviewees' biographies, it was noticeable that about half of them were competitive athletes in their youth. And most earned money in unusual ways during their school and study years: they did not work for an hourly wage but were already entrepreneurial, often in sales. Many interviewees said that sales talent plays a crucial role in entrepreneurial and financial success. Those who do not possess sales skills find it difficult to become rich. The experiences that people had in sports as well as their initial entrepreneurial endeavors in their youth were crucial for their later financial success.
Your essence or message in one sentence?
The prerequisite for extraordinary financial success is to swim against the tide and do things completely differently from what most other people do.
For more information on Rainer Zitelmann, visit:
https://www.excellente-unternehmer.de/redner/rainer-zitelmann-strategische-positionierungkommunikationziele-setzenunternehmerpersoenlichkeiten.html
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