What is the maximum amount of money that a bank account can hold, and in what currency?
What is the largest number in the world? Is it a trillion, a zillion, a gazillion?
If that number ever does exist, then that is the maximum amount of money that a bank account should be able to hold – in every currency!
And that bank account could belong to an individual. Yes, not a group of people, not a company, not the almighty government, but one individual!
I don’t think there’s a maximum number that exists ever. Mathematicians may postulate that a “googolplex” is that number, but I think the word “infinity” best describes it.
We can never reach the end of counting. When we need new numbers to count more of something, we come up with those numbers!
In the 1980s the word “billionaire” was hardly used to describe a rich person. “Multimillionaire” was the word the world was familiar with. 1982 was the year in which Forbes first published its list of the 400 richest Americans and there were only 13 people with up to a billion dollars listed. A net worth of $75million could secure you a spot on the list then.
However, in 2000, the highest percent of the Gross Domestic Product was represented by the list, at 12.2%, driven by the internet boom! And the word “billionaire” started becoming more common world over.
Who says we can’t have the first trillionaires, gazillionaires? My computer even underlined those words in red.
It is possible because true, honest wealth is a result of the value a person is able to add to other people. The more people you serve, the more you will be compensated for your service. It’s a law, the law of compensation.
Make no mistake, there’s a limit to the number of people a single individual can personally serve. There’s a limit to the number of people one person can interact with. Just ask Robin Dunbar and he’ll tell you that the maximum number of people an individual can know and keep close and stable contact with is only 150.
So then how do you serve more and more people to gain more and more wealth?
Duplication! You have to be able to ‘duplicate yourself’ so that you can have more and more hands with which to serve more and more people.
Ask Bill Gates how he was able to put his Microsoft software in 30% of all the personal computers in the world by the year 1983. I’m sure, in his answer, he wouldn’t fail to mention that between 1978 and 1981 his staff was enlarged from 13 employees to 128. The man duplicated himself. He got more hands to serve the world with, and the company’s revenues mushroomed from $4million to $16million.
And the more people Bill served, the wealthier Bill got. Just like the law of compensation! He became the richest person in the world in 1986, with a personal net worth of over $50billion. That amount today stands at $91.2billion, according to Forbes.
So, what did you learn today?
That there’s no limit to the amount of money your bank account can or should hold. And the only path you should take to get there is to serve others with what adds value to them and improves their lives.
You also cannot do it all by yourself. You’ll be limited by you. You need people; you need to duplicate yourself through those people. And they could serve as your employees or partners. Bill partnered with the public in 1986 to take his wealth to the level of becoming the richest person in the world, even though he already had employees working for him. You need partners too.
And one more thing! Be wise to choose the most efficient medium to implement all that you’ve learnt today. So that, not only would you have the capacity to serve more people with your many ‘hands’, you’d also be doing so through the quickest means ever which, in our world today, is the internet.
Today, Bill Gates has been knocked down to number 2 richest person by the first centi-billionaire! Now, that’s another fancy number. Jeff Bezos used the quickest medium – the internet – to serve his products to the world, through the help of his many hands – employees – and many pockets – shareholders and partners – becoming the only person to appear in the Forbes ranks with a 12-figure fortune.
That’s the power of adding the internet to the mix!
So, why don’t you use that same medium to share this article with someone today? And add some value to their lives so that they too can get stirred up to the point of one day breaking the internet banking platform that they use, with numbers yet unknown.
Wishing you a healthy, wealthy and wise month of May!