I was born to be a billionaire entrepreneur. I think. I certainly was born to fly around the world on my own private plane, to swim with sea turtles off my own island, to spend all day shopping at haute couture ateliers.

Forbes recently released an article entitled Are You Born to Be a Billionaire? The article describes characteristics of self-made billionaires and asks the reader if they too possess those qualities.

Among the qualities are passion, a propensity for risk taking, the ability to lead and delete people from your life as needed, the ability to delegate and a natural public ease.

They mention quirky billionaires who embrace and personify these qualities: Ralph Lauren, Pierre Omidyar (creator of ebay), Ty Warner (creator of Beanie Babies), etc.

Not mentioned is the stress of being a billionaire entrepreneur. Your life becomes consumed by the businesses you create and manage. There is little time for swimming with sea turtles or jetting around the world for pleasure.

In short, as the article does mention, you loose all of your independence. I may be able to settle for $200 million if it means my time, my life and my decisions will still be my own. Then again, I may just find buried treasure while I’m out swimming with the sea turtles and thus solve all my problems.

Let me know if you know of secret treasure spots off warm islands where they serve delicious frozen drinks or if you disagree with the Forbes findings.

Tags: Beanie Babies, Billionaires, characteristics of an Entrepreneur, entrepreneur, Forbes, Global Entrepreneurship Week, Pierre Omidyar, Ralph Lauren, treasure, Ty Warner

This entry was posted on Monday, March 10th, 2008 at 11:05 am and is filed under Behind the Scenes, Innovators. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.