#42 Stop looking at billionaires

When I was in college, I had a lecturer named Raghunathan. He taught us Microbiology and Industrial Biotechnology during the first and second years of my undergraduate degree. If you attend one of his classes, you'll know how much passion he has for Microbiology. I remember the whole class sitting through two hours sessions without complaining. He taught the subject with so much passion and dedication. It in turn made us fall in love with Microbiology.

A lot of teachers have taught me during school and college over the years, but Mr. Raghunathan left a mark.

One of the common mistakes we do these days is that we look for inspiration from a selected few - especially billionaires. Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs, or Warren Buffet. We want to learn from their lives, adopt their principles, follow their morning routines, and so on. And, there are hundreds and thousands of books and motivational videos that distill their life for us.

It is not bad. But, a lot of the things we read about them aren't possible to replicate in reality. That's the reason there is one Elon Musk, one Steve Jobs, and one Warren Buffet. You can't learn real-world skills from their lives.

But, you can learn them by drawing inspiration from people around you. I learned how to be passionate about a subject from Mr. Raghunathan. I learned social skills by seeing how my dad spoke to others. I learned how to keep in touch with my friends from my wife. I learned generosity in business from Sulaiman Bhai who always adds few extra pieces of meat when you buy mutton. I learned customer relationships from my neighborhood tea shop that knew how their customers liked their tea.

They're not billionaires. They did not build trillion-dollar companies. But they're masters at what they do. And, instead of reading about them in books, you can observe them in real life and learn from them. Remember, everyone around us has a story to tell. All we have to do is look.