Johannesburg - When renowned entrepreneur Daniel Strauss released his first book “The Billionaire Mindset” he had no idea how well it would do.
Roll on a few months later after its release, and the book would end up as a best-seller around the globe.
Now Strauss is aiming for the same with his latest book.
Next week, he will release “Billionaire Career’ which tells the story of Dan, an employee who lives from paycheque to paycheque.
In The Billionaire Career, Strauss shares useful, practical advice that all entrepreneurs and aspiring entrepreneurs will benefit from through Dan’s journey.
The story contains valuable information on how to create wealth, how to learn more about yourself, give back, and build sustainable business systems.
Strauss successfully communicates complex business terminology such as shareholder value, risk vocabulary, and mentoring through Dan’s story, making it easy to understand by painting a beautiful picture that brings perspective and clarity and pushes you out of your comfort zone.
He also incorporates the natural beauty of South Africa into the story and writes about seven beautiful places, the seven “weekend wonders”, that Dan must visit, which will inspire readers to look up these destinations and add them to their own bucket lists!
This week, the Saturday Star caught up with the successful entrepreneur to chat about his new book.
How thrilled are you about the new release?
What very few people know is that I literally had to beg my publisher to consider my first book because I was so unknown. So the fact that they allowed me to release a second book is wonderful.
What is it about?
Some of the feedback I received after my first book was some of the concepts were difficult to understand. This time, I made it a story which has a main character that travels around South Africa learning from mentors how to build a business. Because the reader can go on a journey with the character, I think it makes the difficult concepts much more understandable because you are living through these concepts with the main character.
Why was it important to release another book?
The main reason is to share the wisdom, the knowledge, concepts and methods that I got from me mentors and that I was privileged to learn from. I want to share this with as many people as possible .
The only way that we will really reduce unemployment in South Africa is if we grow the economy and globally. I will continue to write books, do seminars, mentorships, invest in businesses, starting businesses, and help build business, doing everything in my power to solve this problem.
If a book is a best-seller then great, but that’s not the reason why I’m doing it. I want to share information to increase their probability of success in entrepreneurship.
What are some of the biggest mistakes individuals make when trying to become successful?
People try to follow someone else's recipe or they follow advice that is not meant for their current stage of growth. It is very important to understand your current stage of growth as well as your unique path to success, which is related to your business profile to understand what gives you energy and what drains your energy.
People don’t find their unique paths and due to that, they become discouraged and they think that success is not meant for them. But everyone has their business super power and their unique path to success.
What advice would you give to individuals who have aspirations of becoming a billionaire?
It is not for everyone. Not everybody is willing to do what it takes to follow the road of shareholder value creation that is required to become a billionaire.
It’s perfectly okay to reach your own definition of success and then also in terms of your own aspirations, its not necessary to become a billionaire. You don’t have to be a billionaire to be successful.
What would you say has been the key to your success?
Mentorship. People who have guided me so that I could learn from them so that I didn’t have to make all the mistakes. I still made mistakes but I was able to make less because of the guidance of my mentors.
Can anyone be a billionaire? And how difficult is it to reach that success?
Being a billionaire is not a measure of success. There are various other ways to be successful. But if you want to become a billionaire, there is a clear path to follow which is extremely difficult and has a lot of risk to it, but it's possible to increase your probability of success if you understands the methods concepts and mindsets to follow and build a successful business.
How important is failure in getting success?
Failure is inevitable, we have to learn how to fail forward, but I see progression more in terms of responsibility then in failure.
Wisdom doesn't come with age, it comes with responsibility. If you take full responsibility with something and the buck stops with you, you gain wisdom much quicker then someone who never has to take responsibility for anything.
How important is it that we surround ourselves with successful forward thinking people ? Does the company we keep make a huge difference in the success we have in our lives?
It makes a a massive difference when you surround yourself with confident people. If I go to a braai and people are negative around the braai area, I will change the topic of conversation or try to make people positive. If they insist on being negative, I walk away.
How important are materialistic things in your life?
My family comes first, always. Obviously some materialistic things make your life easier and safer and better for the people around you, but it is only important to the extent that it improves my time with my family, but beyond that it’s superfluous.
Does age matter when it comes to achieving success?
I don’t think age matters. Wisdom comes with responsibility and not necessarily with age. No one should be discouraged. I think it was Colonel Sanders who was in his sixties when he started KFC. We recently helped an entrepreneur who was also in his sixties to build a significant business from scratch in a very short time so age is not an issue.