15 Costliest Mistakes Billionaires (and YOU!) Make

billionaires they're actually just like you you're one successful Adventure away from claiming it and they are one big mistake away from losing everything we all make the same mistakes but the bigger your bank account the harder your fall so you should learn from these mistakes before you become a billionaire is that possible though not you becoming a billionaire that's definitely in the cards but learning from your mistakes do we really learn from our mistakes and how can we Fast Track those lessons so we don't keep stumbling over the same blocks now mistakes create a sort

of stain on your brain they're meant to because that's how you learn but the brain's process of getting over mistakes and taking away more lessons than emotions from them is flawed you end up focusing on the guilt shame and embarrassment more than the puzzle pieces that were missing if you haven't designed a strategy for learning from your mistakes well then you'll never learn from them so today on the alux app we're going to fill in those missing pieces we've got a strategy for you we've looked at the peer-reviewed studies and research in neuroscience and behavioral

economics to optimize that learning path for you so here's what you're going to do first after this video you're going to go to the App Store and download the alux app then come right back here right to this point in the video and scan this QR code on screen because that'll take you to to a discount page you'll get 25% off your yearly subscription to the membership today's app session is going to dig deeper into everything we talk about in this video and here's the first mistake that billionaires and you make number one getting sweet

talked into a sour deal look nobody thinks they're going to fall for the rich long lost dead relative story but more than 50% of people who are exposed to scams any scam fall for them you're sweet talked by someone offering a guaranteed return of 20% on stocks in just a few months it sounds too good to be true or maybe you've just stumbled upon an awesome deal that nobody knows about yet that's what investors at Theos thought the company was valued at $9 billion they tripped over their feet to pour $700 million of investments into

Elizabeth Holmes's company it was going to revolutionize blood testing technology the promise was groundbreaking faster cheaper and more accessible Healthcare but the technology never worked and when the truth came out investors lost everything rert Murdoch Alone lost $125 million which is a lot of money but even that's not as much as the cost of our next mistake number two when you just don't have enough time to do your due diligence if you got a job offer at another company where they offered you a 30% raise would you take it you have to start immediately though

most people would do it but what happens if 6 months later the company goes under now you're out of work with no severance package this is masohi son a Japanese billionaire investor he lost $ 11.5 billion and his credibility when he rushed into investing in the cooworker company wework now wework was supposed to become the next big thing in Tech if he' looked a little bit deeper into the company's financials though he would have seen that they were drowning when weworks IPO failed their valuation went from $47 billion to less than 8 billion you have

to look into and double check all of the important details before you make a big decision now our next mistake is one you'll often face once you've already made a tough decision number number three you fall victim to the sunk cost fallacy imagine this your first semester at University has just ended and you realize you hate your course but you've already invested all of those months and that money so you can't leave now you have to see it through 4 years about $18,000 and a lifetime of stress later you realize you're not even going to

be able to pay off your student loans with the jobs you qualify for all all because of those first few months when you had the chance to turn back but didn't rert Murdoch had a chance to turn back in 2005 when he bought Myspace he paid $580 million for it and as it declined he continued to invest more what was it that Warren Buffett said when you find yourself in a hole the best thing you can do is stop digging number four nickel and diming over the big picture would you trade $230,000 just to save

1,000 of course not but here's how that actually happens today you're looking at a $300,000 house you negotiate the price down to $295 a $5,000 discount but then you start haggling over small things like $1,000 for minor repairs the seller gets frustrated and walks away 10 years later that house is worth over $400,000 another 10 and it's more like 530,000 Richard Branson has spoken about a time when he was so focused on saving small amounts like negotiating fiercely over travel budgets and office furniture that he missed the big picture his competitors invested in their stores

and marketing so they beat him they outpaced virgin in the retail music business if there's a little voice in your head saying go for it try listening to it axer that voice could be your secret weapon which brings us to the next costly mistake number five you decide to ignore your instincts what do you think the costs of marrying the wrong person are with a wedding and a standard divorce about $50,000 with legal battles it could be more like $100,000 plus then there's child support alimony maybe half of your penion and that amount skyrockets if

you've been with a partner who is racking up debt you also lose time time emotional and mental energy and your self-esteem and you know you had that gut feeling but you ignored it businessman Tony Shay has spoken about how he lost $350 million when he ignored his gut feeling he wanted to revamp downtown Las Vegas and turn it into a tech Hub but there were too many issues from the start that deep down he knew it wouldn't work businesses came and left and his vision never took off look okay it's all right to be idealistic

but you need to be able to balance that with being practical number six when you don't file your taxes properly in the US the IRS says they lose about 496 billion because people don't file their taxes at all on time or file them correctly every time you do that you get hit with fines penalties back taxes and interest you need those reports to get a mortgage for business loans immigration documents so many things if it's not done properly you'll have to pay up and they don't accept excuses as payment either which is what actor Wesley

Snipes found out the hard way he might not be a billionaire but he had to pay more than $23 million in back taxes and he went to prison for 3 years all because according to him he was given bad advice by his accountants who said due to a complex legal Theory most Americans aren't obligated to pay federal income tax and therefore he didn't have to pay either look if it's in your name you pay the price number seven signing a contract you haven't even read when you accept so many privacy and subscriber agreements online the

idea of reading a 20page contract in legal jargon seems silly so you just sign that too you've been doing it for years and you haven't lost anything yet so what's the big deal until you want to get out of a gym or cell phone membership and the cancellation fee is $300 or you buy a time share property for $20,000 and then have to pay thousands extra for yearly maintenance fees at some point not reading the contract will cost you more than taking the time to read it number eight not knowing your why in buying and

investing if you bought $55,000 worth of shares in Nvidia in early 16 and sold it just a few months later you would have made a cool $116,000 that's great but today your shares would be worth more than $65,000 yeah that's better but then your $5,000 investment in Snapchat back in 2017 would have grown to $8,000 in a few months but if you held that until today it would be $3,000 but how do you know when to sell well Mark Cuban one said that when he buys a stock he makes sure he knows why he's buying

it he holds it until he learns that something has changed even if the price is change if he still believes in the logic that made him buy the asset in the first place he just won't sell it number nine if you violate the terms of an insurance contract when you sign up for insurance you're in it for the long haul once you start paying you're committed and defaulting on that commitment just once can erase everything you've put into it a storm hits and your roof is damaged costing you $115,000 in repairs if your insurance is

up to date you'd only have to pay like a $500 deductible but we all stumble there sometimes even the richest people and that's why it's important to make sure all of these policies are up to date number 10 a one night stand with no protection what should the cost of one night of fun be a lifetime commitment $200,000 in child support half a million to a million as a single parent one single decision with no thought and safety net in place can change your life forever it can completely derail your financial goals you're entering into

a major deal without proper safeguards you think you're cutting loose and having fun but you're actually merging lives with someone you don't even know now would it be fair to compare this to a billion dollar deal that went sour well maybe not but we're going to do it anyway because it really does drive home the lesson AOL Time Warner the years 2000 they merged in a deal valued at $65 billion it was supposed to be revolutionary AOL had the internet dominance Time Warner had the vast media Empire but they rushed the deal both of them

had their beer goggles on and they saw dollar signs when they should have been SE red flags the dot bubble bursts and Time Warner gets the call saying that aol's value has plummeted and it's wiped billions of dollars away in shareholder value this deal is still considered to be one of the worst mergers in corporate history with around $200 billion in losses over time rush into any merger with no protection and you'll be left with the consequences for a long long time number 11 you don't understand how important attention to detail is in some jobs

missing one small detail can cost your company thousands of dollars if you work on a job like this you're constantly on high alert you check everything twice but if your job doesn't directly affect the bottom line then you can become complacent with attention to detail and it could get you in trouble because any position with responsibility has the potential for expensive mist mistakes it can cost the company thousands and there are some great stories out there about mistakes like a payroll integration that paid everyone in the company their annual salary in one go instead of

their monthly salary a construction worker who dropped a $10,000 marble countertop on brand new floors and adding one or two extra zeros to a standard order really the list goes on here billionaires have more freedom when it comes to paying attention to detail because they have so many experts whose sole job it is to look out for the small things that can cost them a lot of money and here's an incredibly interesting but very tragic story that highlights the importance of this in October 2023 a New York doctor her husband and his mother went to

a restaurant at Disney World Florida they went to this restaurant because it's specifically said that they can accommodate people with allergies and Dr kenak born Tang Swan was severely allergic to Dairy and nuts their server said the food would be made to order they ordered they ate and then Dr Tang Swan went shopping on her own a while later she was struggling to breathe she used her epip pin and then collapsed and unfortunately she didn't make it her husband filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Disney and get this okay because the couple signed up to

a Disney Plus account and clicked accept terms and conditions when they bought their amusement park tickets Disney lawyers are saying that they essentially agreed that any lawsuits against the company would not go to court some smartass law intern probably picked up on this and it could change the game of lawsuits although now because Disney has gotten so much backlash well they're backtracking mistakes cost money and sometimes they cost lives axer so pay attention to the details number 12 Play Russian roulette with addiction don't do drugs it'll destroy your life but the truth is not all

drugs do this to everyone some people come out fine the problem is that it's like playing Russian roulette you don't know if you're going to be the one who gets addicted and if you are it's a long hard road to sobriety even with the warnings millions of people still struggle still get trapped by addiction those kinds of chances just aren't worth it humans have addictive personalities we're always looking for that dopamine hit for some people it's food for others it's social media video games or shopping none of these are good in excess but the cost

of them is lower than being addicted to drugs alcohol gambling or smoking now most billionaires they're addicted to money and power that doesn't come cheap either but at least they make a profit from it it's hard to for force yourself away from something that your brain craves so the best lesson is to choose your addiction wisely and try to control it as much as possible number 13 when you disregard red flags instead of turning around there's ignoring your gut instinct where you can't exactly pinpoint the problem but you know you've got an uneasy feeling about

something and then they're simply ignoring red flags they're there waving at you and you just wave right back these red flags are someone's actions showing you that you're making a mistake and that you should stop but it's easy to think that if you keep on going things will change or that it won't be that bad but unfortunately it usually only goes from bad to worse Bill Amman a well-known hedge fund manager ignored red flags when he invested in Valiant Pharmaceuticals he knew that Valiant was driving their revenue New Growth mostly by buying up other drug

companies and then raising the prices he marched on thinking it was worth the deal but when journalists started looking into their Shady business practices their stock plummeted and everyone started filing lawsuits Amman had to sell at a loss his hedge fund lost about $4 billion those red flags are not a friendly hello aluer so when you spot them heed the warning and turn your ass around number 14 choosing cash over Equity imagine you're one of the first employees at a tech startup they don't have a lot of cash so instead of a big salary they

say that you can take a $5,000 annual increase or stock options to the value of 1% of the company's Equity you take the salary because well you like immediate cash and there's no guarantee where this company will go but a few years later that company becomes wildly successful and it's now valid valed at $50 million your shares would have been worth half a million but hey at least you made $25,000 over 5 years that right there is probably the choice a street artist by the name of David Cho thinks about most often Facebook's first president

Shawn Parker hired him to paint murals at Facebook's first office he was offered $660,000 in cash for his work or he could accept stock options in Facebook he thought the idea of Facebook was silly and he didn't believe it was going to be successful but can you guess what he did he took those stock options anyway he took the equity in 2012 when Facebook went public his share ended up being worth $200 million so alexer when it's on the table always take that equity and number 15 depending too much on other people most people rely

on their parents their partner and their colleagues in some way and there's nothing wrong with that connecting with and depending on other people is a sign of healthy relationships but we can often cross a threshold of dependence without even realizing it usually it's Financial or emotional support at some point in your life you're going to depend too much on one person to have your needs met if something happens to that relationship well it's like a rug being pulled out from under you you don't just lose the relationship you lose whatever they were giving you it

can affect your self-esteem and how much you believe you can do things on your own Travis kenck the co-founder and former CEO of uber depended really heavily on his early investors he had a relationship with them so he didn't bother solidifying his position to make it hard for them to push him out he thought he would always have their support but when scandals at Uber started breaking and the company's reputation tanked the board kicked him out the company was his baby he was there from the start but he put all of his eggs and himself

into one basket and he was catapulted out of the nest you have to safeguard your position by knowing how much you're depending on other people and what you're getting from them ask yourself if they took their support away would you still be all right if the answer is no well you know what to do put those safeguards in place and that's all from us today alexir as you can see nobody is immune from mistakes no matter how rich and successful you are but one mistake doesn't mean you're doomed forever and to go even deeper into

this topic don't forget to download our app with the discount that we've given to you you can even take it for a test drive with a cool 7-Day free trial no money UPF front we'll even remind you on day five just to make sure you don't get charged accidentally but you know what once you're in there you'll see just how much value there is you'll want to stick around all right we'd love to hear your thought thoughts here what's a mistake that you made that cost you far more than you expected and what did you

do about it let us know in the comments enrich the community and we'll all learn together we'll see you back here next time alexer until then take care my friend [Music] [Music]