Never Enough: From Barista to Billionaire - Summary and review

Here are lessons on entrepreneurship, investing, managing people, and life - that Andrew Wilkinson presents, from his own experiences building tech startups and becoming a billionaire before the age of 36.

You don't become a billionaire by being employed or working for someone else. You need to become an entrepreneur and build businesses - if you don't have a ton of money and can start investing from the get go.

So, the first lessons are on how to build great businesses, ie. the fundament to becoming a billionaire.

• Become the middle man - be the person that puts all the pieces together

• Hire people to do the work for you

• Become the king of distribution

• Look out for the hedonic treadmill - ie. the idea that you have to keep running fast and faster, only to maintain the same level of happiness

• "Never again do something that could otherwise be done by someone else"

• There is always someone else who loves the job you hate

• The key to happiness is NOT to stop working at all, but rather only doing the tasks that "doesn't feel like work" to you

• Find a partner that complements you

• Find people that you like to work with, that are honest, and people trust - put them in the right positions

• Often founders are experts at 0 to 1 with passion. But rarely have the skills to manage companies through the later growth stages.

• Focus on what you do best - don't be a sprinter trying to run marathons.

  • If you are a starter: focus on starting businesses from 0, and find operators to continue scaling them.

  • If you are an operator: find businesses that you can operate at scale and grow.

• “Invert, always invert!” Munger said that “problems are often easiest solved in reverse” and explained that it’s much easier to think about what you don’t want than what you do.

• Set your “anti-goals” - they often might be easier to define

  • Itemize everything you hate about your job, or startup -> then delegate and structure things so that you are not responsible for any of those tasks anymore.

When you built a business or multiple that generate cash flow and/or enterprise value to realize at an exit, you will suddenly have capital to invest towards your goal of becoming a billionaire.

Making wise investments of these funds is a big part of becoming rich.

Simply avoiding the common mistakes and not burning the cash on a crazy lifestyle - will get you far.

Here are some rules on how to invest like the best, based on Munger's philosophy, Warren Buffet, and Wilkinsons own learnings:

• Book tip that changed how Andrew Wilkinson thought about investing: The Warren Buffett Way, by Robert G. Hagstrom.

• Don't seek diversification - instead seek "deworsification". Munger asked “Why would you ever want to invest in your 100th best idea?”

• Diamond hands. Buy companies and "do nothing" - don't bet on short-term stock market swings. Often hold for decades.

• Sit on cash and find your no-brainers - ie. deals so good they make it hard to lose.

• Think not in weeks, months, or even years, but in decades.

• Choose businesses that don't go away

  • Newspapers went from being one of the world’s best businesses to one of the world’s worst in a matter of years when the internet brought the cost of publishing to near zero.

Peter Lynch famously said "invest in what you know”.

Example: you drink Starbucks -> invest in Starbucks stock.

You cannot build billion dollar businesses by doing it all yourself. You have to find other great people, put them in the right positions and allow them to build the value for you.

You need to learn to become a word-class manager - removing yourself from the business operatively as soon as possible.

• You have to accept you are not the jockey on the horse.

• If you want someone to do something and be motivated to do it - let it be their own idea. People don’t like doing things that aren’t their own idea.

• The hardest part: giving your "jockey" the freedom to make mistakes.

• Wilkinson and his partner summarized it: when it came to mistakes, we would allow “flesh wounds, not mortal wounds.” And even these "flesh wounds" cost millions of dollars.

Finding happiness is not about getting rich, as Wilkinson discovered.

Being aware of what will really make you happy - is the most important lesson of all. Here are some of the learnings Wilkinson presents on this topic.

Money removes obstacles. But it also creates new ones.

People might change

When you become rich, just like William Golding, author of Lord of the Flies winning the Nobel Prize said - "you will find out who hates you".

Money also, attract the wrong kinds of friends.

You might change

You will also naturally start to adapt your lifestyle and goals to the ones you spend time with.

Whatever those around you model as being valuable and important, you will unconsciously find yourself caring about and wanting.

Spend time amongst rich people, and suddenly you feel the need for a Rolex, too.

This is called mimetic desire.

Always comparing yourself, and wanting more

A lot of billionaires seemed to be caught up in "Who Has What", obsessed with adding more 0's to their net worth, and yet they had everything.

• It's easy to get caught up in only "Looking up, never down".

• Never taking a moment to appreciate what you have.

• “We’re like demented squirrels, storing nuts for the winter when we already have ten trees full,” Wilkinson said.

• "The payoff wasn’t the point — it was the process" - Wilkinson

  • Wilkinson found he enjoyed the journey itself the most - the struggle of creativity, helping people reach their potential, and being in the flow state.

• Getting rich itself was not fulfilling

  • "If a million dollars didn’t give me joy, why would a thousand more millions?" - Wilkinson

  • Turns out it was just a number. And making money itself was a quite empty goal.

Never enough talks about how to build a billion dollar business empire from the ground up - build great businesses as an entrepreneur, invest your money like the best on the way, become a world-class manager, and find out what makes you happy.