Carlos Slim Helu Shares the Secrets of His Success
Born on: 20th Jan 40
Born in: Mexico
Marital status: Married
Occupation: Chairman & CEO of Telmex
Carlos Slim Helu, is a early 20th century style American capitalist who believes in monopoly, old factory system and economies of scale more than innovation and technology. This telecom tycoon is compared to the likes of Rockefeller, Carnegie, Stanford and J P Morgan etc and is often called Robber Baron of 21st century. He is first person from a developing country to have topped the "Forbes" list.
He is a multi billionaire with a difference; his old world style appears not only in his business style, but also in his life style. With his fortune estimated at $74 billion, this wealthiest person in the world is a man of taste and class. Carlos Slim Helu has carving for classical painting and sculpture by great artists likes Rodin, Renoir, Da Vinci and Micheal Angelo. Despite being a multi billionaire, this 71 years old man lives in a modest six-bedroom house, a mile away from his office. He doesn't believe in conspicuous consumption and has no interest in flashy super yachts or palatial houses around the world.
Carlos doesn't even own a fleet of cars and still loves to drive by himself. He is fan of Baseball club "New York Yankees", but unlike Russian Oligarchs he is happy being a fan only and doesn't want to buy it. He is of Lebanese origin and like his fellow Lebanese people, he believes in living a simple family life as against much publicized life of American Business Tycoons. He is a family man and had a successful married life with Soumaya Domit, in whose name he also founded an Art museum called "Museu Soumaya". With increasing age he has given more and more business responsibilities to his 3 sons and 3 sons in laws.
As an entrepreneur and
investor, I have other successful business mentors and investment gurus I look
up to for guidance and inspiration. And one of such successful entrepreneurs is
Carlos Slim Helu; the richest man in the world since 2010 and one of the richest
people in the world.
Over the years, I have quietly been understudying the life and
business strategy of Carlos Slim Helu; and just when I was about to wrap up my
findings and share with you the lessons I learned from this telecom
billionaire, he appeared live on an interview with Larry King of CNN.
I watched the Carlos Slim Helu being interviewed by Larry King;
my respect for him increased. Now based on the interview and personal findings
from my research carried out; I will be sharing with you eleven business and
life lessons I learned from Carlos Slim Helu, including a brief excerpt of his
interview with Larry King. So if you are ready to learn from the Mexican tycoon
and billionaire; then sit back and read on as I share with you an excerpt of
Carlos Slim Helu’s interview with Larry King and eleven business lessons I
learned from it.
Interview
with Larry King: Eleven Business and Life Lessons I Learned from Carlos Slim
Helu
Larry King: It’s an honor to welcome you to LARRY KING LIVE, Carlos Slim
Helu.How did it feel when you were ranked number one?
Carlos Slim Helu: Thank you very much for your invitation Larry. Any kind of
difference before, after, during, is not important. I think what is important
is what you are doing and how you are operating the company that you are
managing and when you have many parts of the public investing in this company.
Larry King: So, it’s not a particular honor?
Carlos Slim Helu: No, no, no. it’s not championship. It’s the competence; the
competence in your sector with other companies not looking to have some kind of
records in this issue.
Larry King: When you topped the annual richest list back in March, they
listed your net worth at $53.5 billion. Is that about right?
Carlos Slim Helu: I really don’t care about my ration. What they do is know how
much share of the companies that we have investments and we are managing, and
has the market price. The market price changes everyday, every time with a lot
of volatility and you cannot make balance sheets of what is happening. What you
are taking care is about the operation of the business, the investments of the
companies; the technology you are using, the segment you are in and how you are
managing the business.
Business lesson one: Building a successful business is all about
competence
Larry King: How do you stay on top of all that?
Carlos Slim Helu: Well, how can you be on top of the
things you do? I think when you are
involved in a business first of all; you need to know the business. After you
know the business, you can let the numbers tell you what is happening. You can
read with the numbers to know if things are going well or if things are not
going well. You make co-operation with your competitors; you look at the
international references to try to achieve the best reference nationally. The
numbers talk to you.
Larry King: Were you also good with numbers?
Carlos Slim Helu: Yes, yes I think so. Some people are very good with letters and
others have a good grasp of numbers. You can manage numbers in different ways;
you read the numbers and you understand what is happening in the companies.
Business Lesson
Two: Understand your line
of business and its numbers
Larry King: it’s estimated that you and your family control more than 200
companies. You are one of Mexico’s largest private employers. You are in
control of so many things. Do you feel, Carlos; as I have gotten to know you? Do
you feel enormous responsibility?
Carlos Slim Helu: Yes. I think that anything that has privileges has
responsibility. All this is responsibility and compromise. Compromise and
responsibility are not only for me and my family, but also the management team
to have the responsibility to know the importance of what we are doing and that
at the end of temporarily managing this; we don’t take anything when we pass
away. And we do need to do business with a sense of responsibility.
Larry King: How many people currently work for
you?
Carlos Slim Helu: well, I think we are around 250,000
Business Lesson Three: Becoming a successful entrepreneur is all
about responsibility
Larry King: Was your goal to make money? Is that
your goal?
Carlos Slim Helu: I think it’s not a goal. Money is not a goal. The goal is to
make companies grow, develop, be competitive, be in different areas, be
efficient to have a great human team inside the company. Look for human
development of the people of the companies because you cannot do anything
without human capital, without your human team.
We are talking about how many people are with us but there are
managers that are critical that began working in the company and grew with the
company and develop to achieve success being in high level management position.
And now the goal is well by one side, I think the wealth should be reinvested
to create more wealth. The fruit of wealth is income and it is important to
develop the distribution of income. The distribution of income comes mainly by
employment and second, by the money that goes to the government.
Business Lesson
Four: Be driven by passion;
not money
Larry King: Carlos Slim Helu owns one of the oldest hotels in Mexico, Hotel
Genève but the empire is in the telecommunications company; Telmex, which he
acquired in 1990 when Mexico began privatizing its national industries. A
decade later, he spun off the cell phone business, American mobile and it’s one
of the largest companies in all of Latin America. He also owns Sunborn,
Mexico’s major retail outlet and biggest restaurant chain. His interest
includes one of Mexico’s most important banks, airline, a mining company,
hotels, construction, insurance companies, a bottling company, cigarette
manufacturer, much real estate and on and on and on.
Larry King: Are you always looking to acquire?
Carlos Slim Helu: In 1965 when I began, I had a soft drink bottling company. We
are not in the bottling business anymore. We sold the tobacco business also to
our partners. We are concentrating because during these 45 years and depending
on the circumstances we were involved; we have the possibilities to buy some
business. With time, we thought we were focusing a little more on what we
thought had more important potential and development and needed more
investments and management.
Business Lesson Five:Concentrate on your core competence.Be
focused
Carlos Slim Helu: In ’82, there was a big crisis in Mexico and
that meant that nobody was investing. And we invested in paper; we invested in
tyres for cars, we invested in auto parts and aluminum and copper combustion.
Actually we were focusing. We sold a corporation, we sold a tile business we
bought in ’82 also; both of them. We were focusing in telecommunication,
financing and mining, retail.
Business Lesson Six: Get in when others are getting out
Business Lesson Seven: Always be prepared to make your big move
Larry King: You are very involved in the education of the people, I know
because I spoke to all those students. You give scholarships every year, right?
Carlos Slim Helu: Yes.
Larry King: How much do you devote to charity?
Carlos Slim Helu: well we make it, not talking about a budget
and say well; this year we will invest $100 or $100 million. We try to find
which are the problems that we need to attack and then we put all the money
that is necessary. We also have programmes and we put in these programmes and
all that are necessary. Let’s say in the surgery, we do surgery around the
country. We began with 2000 a few years ago, now we are doing 120,000.
Business Lesson Eight: Give back to the society
Larry King: Was there early in life, a big event
that happened to you that turned you from a millionaire to billionaire? Was
there a major occurrence?
Carlos Slim Helu: I think work, investments and reinvestments. My father used to
say that the money that gets out of a company evaporates. That means he was
thinking in terms of investments and reinvestment and reinvestment. That is one
of the things we do. Other things that we do are in good times, we maintain our
winning streak. When we do profitable business, we don’t get crazy; putting
expenses all around or making fancy things. Then, we didn’t have corporate
offices until now. We used to have them in the factories. The offices of the
company were in the factories, not in another corporate building. I think it’s
the way it happened.
Business Lesson Nine:Watch your expenses
Business Lesson Ten:Reinvest, Reinvest, Reinvest
Larry King: Is it hard for you to see all the
poverty in Mexico?
Carlos Slim Helu: It’s hard but I am convinced that all this poverty in Mexico and
in Latin America, like it’s happening in China is the opportunity to grow. It’s
an opportunity for investment; it’s an economic activity and to take out
poverty is the best investment any person or a person can do in any place
because poverty used to be an ethical issue, used to be a social justice but
now it’s an economic need. You need to integrate these people that are marginal
and are in poverty; you need to integrate them into modernity.
Business Lesson Eleven: See opportunities, not problems
As a final note, I hereby end my excerpt on the interview
between Larry King and Carlos Slim Helu. I believe you have learned something
from the life of this billionaire and I also hope that the business lessons I
extracted will prove useful to you. Before I drop my pen, below is a quick
recap of the eleven business lessons I learned from the Mexican telecom
billionaire; Carlos Slim Helu.
1. Building a business is all about competence
2. Understand your line of business and its
numbers
3. Becoming a successful entrepreneur is all about
responsibility
4. Be driven by passion; not money
5. Concentrate; be focused
6. Get in when others are getting out
7. Always be prepared to make your big move
8. Give back to the society
9. Watch your expenses
10. Reinvest, reinvest, reinvest
11. See opportunities; not problems
Very nice story.... I follow this rule in future....
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