Sandra Newman @sannewman
THE SEVEN SECRETS OF HIGHLY SUCCESSFUL PEOPLE
- Private school
- Legacy lvy admission
- Nepotism hire
- Seed capital from family
- Club memberships
- Personal assistant, nanny, ghost writer answer
- Journalists who ask, “What’s your secret?” and uncritically publish the
Yep. They start from a position that most of us can’t even dream of achieving.
Most of us don’t even realize what being truly wealthy is like. I come from an affluent family. I never had to worry about necessities, had a decent education at the high school level to secure scholarships at good universities. But there are people who don’t need to care about anything at all. They can just get any degree with minimal work, inherit the family business, and have someone else run it for them. On the other hand, I’ve known people who had to drop college or had to go worse colleges since they couldn’t afford the fees (I’m not from US, college is not even that expensive here, still some can’t afford it). The wealth inequality makes me feel nauseous.
Another issue is that even with all the advantages listed here, it can still be “hard” to work towards success. You still have to work every day for a time and work long hours if you want to be truly successful (I’m excluding the kids of like multi-millionaires and up). It can feel hard even if you have all the luxuries in the world, and in a way it still is.
The problem is these people can’t ever imagine what it’s like for someone so much poorer than them, and in their eyes, they struggled pretty hard to get to where they are. It’s impossible to imagine what life is like without parents helping financially and without education being paid for.
Right, some people don’t realise that for many people hard work doesn’t pay. That work being hard is just a matter of life for some people, and it will never lead to easier work, let alone fat rewards. You can can work smart, work hard, and still eat shit at the end of the day.
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Earth.
(I’m originally from India, but I think saying Earth is enough here.)
Bro, where are you from? Not fucking earth with that comment.
I’m genuinely at a loss for why you asked your question in the way you did.
Where are you from that doesn’t have wealth inequality?? Tell us your secrets
Nepotism works, just wish I could have gotten into this industry on my own merits. But alas.
Low inheritance taxes exacerbate nepotism
Actually I find a lack of regulation (and nepotism) begets nepotism.
It’s a nice club, and we ain’t in it.
And having just one doesn’t help. I went to a private elementary school (I can tell so many stories about how awful that was) and I’m still a loser.
The worst thing in the world is being the only non-wealthy person in a fancy private school. I spent a year in one (grant, partly) and kept getting in trouble for hurting some bully’s fist when he punched me.
When the guy who treats people like shit has his last name in brass on the Computer Lab wall, he gets away with everything.
We were not wealthy, but not poor. Basically, they could afford the school but not afford a lot of expensive clothes. And since the school didn’t have uniforms, I never wore the designer clothes other kids wore, which really sucked when they bullied me for it.
Wow I can’t imagine. I always thought that was made up, but I went to a poor person school, so everyone dressed like me more or less.
“Always get ut at 3 AM, and get shit done”
then wipe, wash hands, and go back to bed
I did that yesterday, why am I not successful yet
Or in Elon’s case, “always get up at 3 am, tweet [xeet?] until I go back to sleep.”
“Xcreet”
These things are what push people over the top when “working hard” is something most people already do. Successful people with contribution bias discount the luck factor that is truly responsible for putting them where they are. I would argue that anyone who even halfway puts an effort in, but with a substantial starting position, is more likely to succeed than to fail.
It’s like Michelle Obama said, “I have been at probably every powerful table that you can think of, I have worked at nonprofits, I have been at foundations, I have worked in corporations, served on corporate boards, I have been at G-summits, I have sat in at the U.N.: They are not that smart.”
always wondered why Snow-white needed 7 dwarves
I feel sorry for dwarf number 6 having to write books, take care of children and also be a personal assistant
You also forgot to steal the accomplishments of others
I came from dirt poor and I’m wealthy now. In my opinion the key to success comes down to a few things.
- Education
- Need
- Luck
Education: My mother made $15k per year and my private school tuition was $375/month. This also provided me with friends that were not dirt poor (this also helps a lot). My wife received the best education the Soviet Union had to offer, which is better than anything we could even imagine stateside.
Need: Hunger is s great motivator. It also gives you this every present fear that if you take your foot off the gas, you’ll be hungry again.
Luck: This one is obvious. Plenty of people are hungry and plenty of people have good educations and still struggle.
I think my wife and I did well because we teamed up early. Had we tried solo I think we would have failed.
You seem to have neglected the most important one: privilege.
Millions of Americans are stuck in a cycle of generational poverty. Really difficult to manage even the first one when you’re grinding to just put food on the table daily, and that’s the reality for 46 million Americans right now.
This ultra-priviliged, ignorant “you just gotta grind for it” attitude is literally what this meme is making fun of. Congrats on being the butt of the joke and doubling down on it.
Somehow I highly doubt your mom spent 1/3 of her pre-tax income to send you to private school. And based on how much she paid for it, I assume you went to private school in the 80s. The median family wage these days can’t afford rent, much less $15-20,000 a year private schools, which by the way is what they cost this century. And if my assumption is correct about you growing up in the 80s, that $15,000 a year is the equivalent of nearly $59,000 a year today - higher than the median family wage, so not quite dirt poor.
I think he covered all of that when he said “luck” 🤣
Yep
Fair enough. 😅
Bro you just gatekept how poor someone who grew up hungry must have been for their parent to send them to a private school, probably to escape that generational cycle you were harping on.
You literally just went and did the Fox News Lobster Dinner on Foodstamps special.
I get that it’s frustrating to hear “lol just grind bro” attitude but Jesus fuck did you pick the exact wrong string of words to put together given the context of what they said.
Your reading comprehension seems to be lacking, maybe your mom should’ve sent you to private school.
I’m wealthy now
Oh honey… You’re on Lemmy. No you’re not. At best you’re on the top of the poors, and have no context of what wealthy really is.
Unless you’re a secret self made billionaire that likes to slum it? In which case, I’m an honestly surprised.
Wealthy is relative. It’ll have an entirely different definition to a poverty stricken homeless person than it does to a billionaire.
But how come being on lemmy is considered a place for poor people?
Wealthy usually means multi millionaire that makes at least half a million a year. I guess I assume those people don’t hang out online.
Nah, they just hang out on linked in to farm the ego boost of networking connection requests fo dayz
I’m job hunting, so I spend a lot of time on LinkedIn. This is a really great summary of the entire site.
LinkedIn is very useful to keep in touch with colleagues while your coming up. Honestly, don’t underestimate it just because it’s full of spammers. Once you’re established it becomes useless. The networks I’m past of tend to hang out in mailing lists, private rooms (Slack, etc), and stuff like that. Also what gets discussed is super mundane. Does anyone have spare tickets to ACL? Fantasy Football. Book lists. Best places to eat and visit when in “x”. From time to time somebody asks for “an in” with a particular company, or a summer internship for their kid, VC, attorneys, etc. A lot of charity conversations. Ninety percent of the time, it’s very unremarkable.
PS: I took my companies 100% “work from home” in 2012. When the pandemic was starting and a lot of us suspected that a Chinese style lockdown was coming, there was a lot of exchange of information on how to best, and quickly, implement WfH. Executives from companies in the collaboration space were there and they set a lot of other companies up within hours with the particulars to be figured out later. CEO’s, some from very recognizable names, openly discussed it. I personally provided all the information I could about or experience as a permanently WfH organization. Within days (before the official lockdowns were mandated) most of the companies in that list had already gone WfH. Some, including two really big names, went into it with the expectation of maintaining WfH as a permanent option. I like to think I helped convince them but that’s just my ego talking.
Networks don’t have to be evil centers of self interest and conspiracy. Most are boring and sometimes some good comes out of it.
I’m not saying networking is evil, I’m saying it’s just scummy that networks are the primary driver of being able to find a decent career, especially for people who have enough trouble developing social connections for their own social enjoyment’s sake.
Sadly, you are correct. I wouldn’t call it scummy because it makes it sound conspiratorial, but for most busy managers it’s easier to hit their friends and colleagues for hires than it is to hit a job site. Digging through hundreds of submissions and making calls is very time consuming. Sure there are recruiters but your first and easiest choice is to call up people you know. Maybe you can hire them, a known entity with a skill set you know it’s there, or they can recommend someone. It’s not fair, but once you’re in s hiring position I can guarantee that you will do the same. Cold recruiting is just a pain in the ass
If you are stuck with only job sites, there are ways to better your odds. The odds still suck, but they can suck less.
I don’t see why you think that. What you describe is essentially my household but I’ve been online since ~1996 with Usenet and IRC, and my wife passes the time by reading gossip sites. People don’t have to change all of their habits the moment they have money.
Wealthy, not rich, not even affluent. Wealthy just means I can afford to live comfortably as long as I don’t get a prolonged illness or get sued. They key to happiness is the management of expectations.
You’re describing being upper middle class not wealthy.
I think people reading my comment and getting stuck on “wealthy” are missing the forest for the leaves. My point was that unless you were lucky to be born privileged, regardless of level of privilege, your only way up is if you have excellent education (especially if that education includes privileged friends like you would get in a private school), a hunger and singular focus to get out from your shitty situation, and copious amounts of luck.
People born rich have no idea what it takes to climb out from living in public housing. Had my mother not spent a huge chunk of her paycheck on my private education, and had federal grants and low tuition not existed in the 90’s, there’s no way I would have had the life I have now.
Looking at tuition prices now pisses me off. I guess the crack in the window people like me squeezed through was too wide, so they tightened it down further.
You’ve got it backwards. As Chris Rock said, “Shaq is rich. The white man who signs his check is wealthy.”
In my mind, affluent < rich < wealthy. But it’s all relative anyway.
To me:
Affluent: Nice house, nice car, nice clothes, in debt up to their eye balls. Can afford college for the kids…for more debt. Kids will graduate with crippling debt.
Wealthy: Can afford to buy nice things. Can afford to send kids to college. No debt.
Rich: Fuck you money
Billionaires: Honestly, my brain can’t reconcile this level of wealth. I just can’t comprehend it.
Honestly to me a “rich person” is kinda just someone who can pay rent on time every month, without stressing about it.
I hear ya. It’s all relative. I remember back in 1997 I had done a little job, got paid for it, and deposited the check. It was the first time I saw that I had $424 in my bank account mid month and I didn’t have to stress about rent. I remember because I thought it was so much money that I had to show my wife.
My wife was the first to get “a good job” (it was actually terrible) and I remember when she got her first paycheck. It was $998.86 and we just happy cried in the car.
My mother died during my senior year of high school and her parents are in a poor Eastern European country. No help was coming. These memories stick around because, wether other people think it or not, being that desperate leaves a permanent mark, and these were the first glimpses of hope.
PS: The place we rented for $275 (yes, it was a ghetto) twenty five years ago goes for $1200 now. I genuinely have no idea how people are supposed to survive.
Luck favors the nepo babys
Oh, no doubt. I’m just saying that the bare minimum you need to “lift yourself up” is education, hunger/drive, and luck. Believe me, I know many privileged little shits.
Yeah even nepo babies have to compete with other nepo babies especially in the upper echelon of their field. They still need to have drive and excel at whatever they are doing. Just look at Formula 1, the sport that is full of rich kids, the driver with the richest dad who even bought a team for his son has never won an F1 race in his life and only has 3 podiums so far while his team mate had several this year alone. And the two drivers with the most world championships wins are from middle class families. While privilege will get them far it won’t carry them to the top.
I mean, good for you, and you’re not entirely wrong, but you’ve got them in the wrong order. Luck is number 1, because the rest flow from that (education, connections, etc)
People place WAY too much of their own effort (which is important), and not enough on luck.
As long as you’re very cognisant that for many, many people, the cycle of poverty is unbreakable to not fault of their own.
If yes, then, I’m happy for you and you should still feel proud of yourself.
For sure, they weren’t in order. Where you’re born is all luck. The fact that I was born to a mother willing to sacrifice a large percentage of her income towards education is also luck. Etc.
Education is number one? The daughter of my wife’s housemate has a PhD and she’s been out of work for two years. That also sounds like need.
Guess she’s just lacking your luck. Maybe that part is more important than you think.
You shouldn’t do a PhD for money, that’s the first thing my supervisor told me when I started mine. Also, having a doctorate might disqualify you for a big portion of the market, and in many cases it can be a disadvantage.
They aren’t in order. If they were then luck is always number one.
This ia fucking awesome but we’re talking about the Working Class and the Ownership Class. You’re working class. And congratulations that your efforts and strategy has paid off for you!
- Education
I really hope my student loan debt gets the memo that it was supposed to make me wealthy.
Education was the best decision I’ve ever made for myself (because there’s so much more value to education than just a career/future paycheck), but I went into it knowing that the trade off would be decades of financial sacrifice and probably hardship. The hope is that it would get me a middle to upper middle class salary, but I’m not sure anyone anticipates higher education to be even one of many keys to real financial success.
I think my wife and I did well because we teamed up early. Had we tried solo I think we would have failed.
It really sucks that marriage is now a financial necessity in the US. Some of us are ace/aro and will never get married or live with a partner. But even for those who aren’t, if someone wants to be single or just not move in with their partner, then they should be able to have that choice. I have no idea how I will ever live alone. The thought of living with roommates for the rest of my life turns my stomach. Introverts and neurodivergents should also be able to live in a situation that works for us. One of the worst parts of the housing crisis is compromising what makes a house a home - security, comfort, having your own space. It should be more than just paying to be indoors and having to live in uncomfortable, shady situations just to make that happen.
Need: Hunger is s great motivator. It also gives you this every present fear that if you take your foot off the gas, you’ll be hungry again.
I hope this is a joke. What a sad way to look at life if not.
Education
Most people misunderstood this. I meant foundational education, not higher education. My wife and I knew that we needed a degree because nobody would hire us with only a highschool diploma. We also could only afford a rural state university because after scholarships and grants it was almost free, and free is basically all we could afford. It was also understood that our degrees would get us absolutely nothing (worthless in almost all sense of the word). Because we had strong foundational education, we were able to absorb and process, and because we knew the degree would be worthless we taught ourselves other skills. So by the time we graduated I already had a fledgling PC and network support business (which led to my first corporate job) and my wife was well on her way towards being able to have enough skill to work on databases including based, SQL Server, and Oracle. None of this is what we wanted as a career but if was something we figured would feed us.
It really sucks that marriage is now a financial necessity in the US.
Context is important here. I was an orphan at 16 and wife’s parents live in a poor eastern European nation. We literally had no support structure and no safety net. I don’t know if it is necessary for everyone, but it was for us.
I hope this is a joke. What a sad way to look at life if not.
Not a joke nor do I romanticize it. We shouldn’t need to feel like there’s a gun to our head or that we are under the master’s whip at all times in order to do our best. I’m my case and my life experience, I can’t help but love in constant fear that I could be destitute at any moment if I stop trying so hard. I don’t know if that’s sad or not because that’s all I’ve known since my mother died, but the results are clear. When my friends and colleagues quit or took a break, I didn’t. When my friends felt comfortable in their cushy jobs, I quit and took a harder job I was not fully qualified for (I lied my way in) and trusted the fact that I could teach myself how to do it before anyone figured out I couldn’t. When my career peaked, I quit and started my own business, then another, then another, etc. I’m not smart. I’m not brave. I’m terrified that at any moment I won’t be able to work anymore and I’ll have to live off of what I’ve made so far until the day I die, and I’m not sure it’s enough. Trauma is real, and I understand that’s what I’ve got, but the results speak for themselves. Fear and hunger are great motivators.
People don’t want to hear that. They want to keep believing that they’re poor not because they made a suboptimal choice but because the system conspired against them. My advice is pretend rich people aren’t real and make your life and the people’s around you the best you can.
I think you missed the point. You could have all of the building blocks. But without either privilege or luck you will not gain any traction.
How can we ignore that super-wealthy people exist when there’s a causal link between their situation and ours? They’re rich and most people are poor, and they are rich because others are poor. Wealth doesn’t generate itself, and no human can generate a billion dollars in value alone, even by working 170-hour weeks.
People getting richer doesn’t automatically make someone else poorer. The total amount of resources the human species has access to is constantly growing as our productive power increases. In fact, most of the time the total productive power increase is directly linked to someone getting richer.
Wealth doesn’t generate itself, and no human can generate a billion dollars in value alone, even by working 170-hour weeks.
Sure they can. J.K. Rowling is a billionaire. How many people did she exploit by writing 7 books? The people who worked on the trains or in the coffee shops she hung around and bought coffee from? The idea that people only collect wealth by depriving someone else of it is a pre-modern understanding. Same with the idea that value is related to hours worked.
Why don’t we send more people to private school then? Start with the easy one.
It’s not about the school itself, it’s about the elitism of the schools and the connections that the insular communities allow. It has little to do with the quality of the education, so sending everyone to private schools wouldn’t change much except as to create more religious indoctrination
Ok, but you’re saying one advantage elites have is they have access to this space that other people don’t have. If we just give more access to that space, we take away that advantage.
Credentialism is why. That is, the overinflation of the importance of credentials to keep belief in a meritocracy alive. A few years ago, when unemployment was higher, I learned that AmLaw 100 firms (i.e. the biggest U.S. law firms) were requiring applicants for runner positions to have a bachelor’s degree. A runner literally just schleps documents around between offices, a job that normally would be a good way to integrate people with intellectual deficits into society, but they required a bachelor’s as a useful screening tool for the hiring process.
If we send more people to schools to get the better credentials, it doesn’t create more room at the top of the social pyramid. It just makes the requirements for entry more exclusive. And that benefits the kids born wealthy, because they can afford to get that MD-PhD to get in the door.
Because it will stop being “private”, which in this case is a blanket term for elite schools. If everyone goes to elite schools, by definition it’s not elite anymore.
I went to a private elementary school. Not only did it not help me in the adult world, it didn’t even help me in middle school and high school other than put me in GT classes I shouldn’t have been put in, make me totally unprepared for class sizes (there were 11 kids in my sixth grade class), etc. Oh, and they had a no homework policy which meant I could never get used to doing homework and by high school just stopped doing it.
On top of all that, I had the same teacher for all six years who both mentally and, once, sexually abused me and encouraged other kids to bully me.
Not one of those things would have happened if I had just gone to a normal public school. Those, for all their faults, prepare kids to be adults.
But nepo babies never have to be adults.
So maybe we shouldn’t send more kids to private schools. We need adults.
