Dr. George S. Chua l February 9, 2023 l Manila Bulletin
When I was in grade school, I could only imagine the good life of my classmates who come from well off families with their nannies in nice uniforms and their huge chauffeured cars. When I was in high school, I always admired my classmates who excelled in sports and were quite popular with everyone, including the girls! By the time I got to college and post graduate education, I could only envy my classmates who got really high grades without even breaking a sweat. It would seem that they effortless knew everything!
I always thought that these classmates of mine will be successful when they grew up. As we got older, the reality was that many of them did not become as successful as I thought and some even ended up being a disappointment. It would seem that coming from a rich family, being talented and doing great in school do not guarantee success.
Doing an internet search on what are the predictors of success we can see answers like grit, the ability to delay gratification, conscientiousness, a belief in free will, socializing, childhood adversity, avid reading, past success, and so on. How does one measure success? People have different answers like happiness, recognition, popularity, power or wealth. Let us use wealth as a benchmark for success since it is the most readily quantifiable and is how many people measure success.
I have to admit that I have seen many of these traits in successfully wealthy people, but you need not have all of these elements present to become successful. I think the ability to integrate these traits, is an equally important if not even more important than these individual factors. To maximize the benefits you should be able to learn from your past experiences and knowledge and do something positive about it. As an example, just experiencing childhood adversity is not an automatic predictor of success. If that were the case, every child who grew up in poverty should have become successful.
In addition, I have also noticed three characteristics of legally wealthy people that they have had from a very young age. These are, they like to build things, know how to negotiate and have a generational view point. I would love to hear from you if you know anyone who was able to build his wealth without having these three characteristics. This does not cover people who merely inherited their wealth and did nothing to further add to it.
Building things means everything from building a business, asset accumulation and constructing houses, buildings, commercial complexes and all sorts of infrastructure. Knowing how to negotiate is also a key factor to success. You need to be able to negotiate not just for a one off thing but to be able to establish that you got a great deal, a reputation of fairness and leaving something on the table for your counterparty, otherwise you will soon find that no one wants to do business with you. Finally, they are able to take action on things that they will never be able to benefit from since these will only come to fruition beyond their lifetime.
*** (The views and comments of the author are his own and not of the newspaper or FINEX. Dr. George S. Chua was 2016 FINEX President, currently an entrepreneur and also a professorial lecturer at the University of the Philippines, Diliman. Comments may be sent to gschua@up.edu.ph)