"The Billion Dollar Secret" - Book Launch Speech - Rafael Badziag - London 2019

This book is a fruit of over half a decade of my research. Roughly 5 years ago I was a struggling entrepreneur. I was struggling with my company.

Before that I had been pioneering e-commerce in Europe back in the 90s with the first online shop for sporting goods in the German-speaking market. Over the years it became a multi-million dollar company and it looked quite successful from the outside. But it definetely didn't feel successful from the inside.

Does it sound familiar to any of you? I hit a glass ceiling at some point with the growth of my company and I couldn't break break through that glass ceiling. No matter how much effort, how much work I was putting in.

It felt like a constant uphill battle. There was always firefighting and we were hardly making any money. I could see competitors who started later, who became more successful, who grew faster.

And soon they outperformed me and they made the impression on me as if they were doing it with much more ease and flair. And I didn't have any formal business education. I am a mathematician myself, started my company out of the dorm And before that I actually thought, "If I only had a good business model, I will be successful in business".

But then I realized everybody actually in my industry had the same business model And the only difference between the industries on the first side was the entrepreneur himself. And I realized there was something missing in my entrepreneurial personality because business was apparently not only about the processes About what you do and how you do it, but it has a lot to do with the personality of the entrepreneur himself. And I realized there was something missing in me and I started reading all these books about millionaire thinking, about the business Going to the self-developement conferences and also to the conferences on millionaire thinking.

And I found myself soon in a conference where people were jumping around, high-fiving each other and shouting to each other "You've got a millionaire mind". And it somehow didn't resonate with me. I didn't know what it was, but after a while I realized: "Well, of course I have a millionaire mind.

I have created a multi-million dollar company, but it doesn't feel successful". It's not a big deal nowadays. I mean if you have an apartment in London, you are a millionaire already.

But nobody would consider that a business success or great business performence. And I had to compete against people in my industry who were much better than me and I realized the millionaire thinking is just not enough for that. If I wanted to compete with them, I wanted to do better than that.

Let's say I want to bring this comparison here, because we are in England, the home of football. If you want to play in the Premier League or in the Champions League, to learn from a 3rd league player is just not enough. It won't bring you there.

You would like to learn from the world champion. I asked myself, "Who are the world champions in business? " Who are the best people in business I could learn from that would give me the knowledge, the skills, maybe also the thinking That I need to be able to sustain, to compete in my industry.

And there is, if you are in business, one objective measure of success in business and this is called net worth. Net worth is the value you have created throughout your business career. So, the best entrepreneurs in the world are at the same time the wealthiest people in the world.

To be precise, I mean we are not talking only about money here. The wealthiest people in the world. .

. we call them billionaires. And billionaires create great companies.

They create huge value. And I think every entrepreneur should learn from these people, because they are world champions in their industries. And in comparison to that, the millionaires are rather mediocre performance in business.

And in that situation I'd rather had a billionaire mind. So, this was my thinking throughout that conference. And I came up with the idea to learn from the very best entrepreneurs in the world, to travel the world to meet and interview self-made billionaires And then publish the methods of their thinking, the secrets of their success in this book.

A great vision, would you say. But there is one hitch. Nobody has ever done anything like this before.

Nobody has ever tried to. Why? Because the venture seems impossible to complete.

Let's look at the stats. Billionaires are extremely rare breed. Only one in 5 million people, on average, in the world is a billionaire.

That means that the probability of meeting a billionaire by chance is comparable with winning the main pot in a national lottery. For that book I needed to interview at least 20 of self-made billionaires, which I did. Do you know anybody who won the main pot in the national lottery 20 times?

Common sense tells us this is impossible and I have to tell you it is impossible. If not for the 80 people that were involved in that project and that I want to honor today and I will do it in a minute. I didn't realize at the beginning how much time, effort and money it will take to make this vision a reality.

This vision to put together the thinking patterns of the most successful entrepreneurs in the world. This journey took me several times around the globe and let me see behing walls that are usually or normally inaccessible. All the participants in this project are self-made billionaires, but I want to stress here - this is not about money!

It's about the phenomenal business performance that enabled them to build these great, outstanding companies and create this massive value. In fact, many of the participants of this book, many of the billionaires, they live unpretencious lives In contrast to the shining images that you may know from the media And they are real-life people like you and me who started in most adverse conditions that you wouldn't like to be in yourself. I want to quote here for example Lirio Parisotto who was born in a village with no electricity, no running water, there was no radio, no contact to outer world Not even a paved road.

And he achieved so much in business. Another example who is with us today is Manny Stul who was born in a refugee camp and look where he is today, what he achieved. By the way, Lirio had 11 siblings.

So, it was a big family! And they truly weren't blessed with the best outset. Yet thanks to certain mental principles they made best out of it and achieved unbelievable success.

They did it on a scale that only very few people in the world managed to accomplish today. And they did it, which is also important, while preserving high ethic standards and bringing massive value to the society Both through the means of their businesses, but also through the philanthropic organizations that they create. And this book answers the question, "How is it that some people during a single lifespan managed to build empires and create billions of dollars in value And they do it despite seemingly hopeless beginnings while otheres live regular lives and don't accomplish anything remarkable Even if they are born in the best conditions.

What is the secret of billionaires phenomenal business success? What differentiates them from everybody else in business? In this book self-made billionaires themselves answer these questions.

The Billion Dollar Secret offers the real view of their minds, you can look at the world, so to say, from the perspective of a billionaire. You look into their minds, their hearts, the souls and this book gives you a roadmap to follow their path to extreme success. And maybe the best introduction will be given by Jack Canfield, who wrote a foreword for this book Maybe you know Jack Canfield as a great motivational speaker and author.

But he is also the most successful non-fiction author in history. He has sold 500 million book copies. Half a billion book copies!

Unfortunately he can't be with us today, but he recorded a video message that I want to share with you. Hi everybody! I am Jack Canfield.

You may know me as the co-author of the "Chicken Soup for the Soul" serie, also the co-author of the "Success Principles". And a featured teacher in the Teachers of the Secret I just want to take a few moments and talk to you about the book that I think will change your life. The book is called The Billion Dollar Secret and it's by Rafael Badziag who has done amazing job going around the world And getting access and then interviewing 21 of the world's most successful self-made billionaires.

People that started with nothing, many of them living in shacks where they literally sat on the floor and slept on the floor And have gone to be some of the richest people in the world There have been 15 people that have won the World Entrepreneurial of the Year award And 8 of those people are in the book which is extraordinary The book is filled with the principles and stories and quotes that make it clear that anybody, if they're willing to do the work, live by the principles Be disciplined, which is one of the main things Rafael discovered about all these billionaires, they are extremely disciplined If you're willing to do that. . .

You too. . .

I don't care where you're starting from. . .

can become a billionaire! Rafael talks in the book about how today millionaires are a lot more common, but to become a billionaire is really quite a fit So, for him to have access to all these people and be able to capute the essence of what it takes to become a billionaire And proove to you and me and everyone else that it's possible in today's world, especially now with the technology we have, with the Internet and all of that To build a business, a franchise operation, a net worth and be able to be not only successful, but also to be philanthropically impactful around the world It's really inspiring. So, I want to encourage you to read this book.

It's now one of the top 5 self-help books has ever been written in the world And it can help you go from where you are to where you wanna be. So, make sure youget the book The Billion Dollar Secret. Oh, he misspelled the name of the book.

. [. .

] As I said before, as I mentioned before this unique project wouldn't be possible without the effort and vision of roughly 80 people, I'd say, around the world And some of them are with us today and I want to honor them today.