This is a slightly catchy headline. I have no clue whether the following traits will make you successful. However, these are the qualities / characteristics that I have seen in successful people:

1. To earn the basic money to invest, you need to work real hard, AND real smart: There is no escape from this. You also need to be a little lucky in the breaks that you get. You just got a nice degree and got a good break – you got a job paying you Rs. 2 million. Your classmate got a job paying Rs. 1.2 million. Your parents paid for your studies, but your friends are paying an EMI of Rs. 34,000 per month for 7 years. Yes a little bit of luck is needed, you have it, and you are up and running.

2. Knowing your priorities: Earning Rs. 2 million, having a nice life, and putting money away as saving for future investments is a MUST.

Having said this, let me now look at the traits:

1. Being Goal Oriented in what you do: When you are young and you do not see any great need to save or invest, you need to WRITE down your goals and save/ invest towards that. Later on it becomes a habit.

2. Learning and Risk taking: What looks like Risk taking is not so risky for the person who knows what he is doing. Imagine a tribal seeing you walk on the road with traffic! He must be thinking of you as a very brave man, would he not? It is just that YOU know that the cars will not come on to the footpath. Similarly when you see a person living within the forest – you will be amazed at the knowledge they have of which water to drink, which fruit to eat, and which animal to be scared of. Most of the risk can be well conquered by LEARNING.

3. Keep learning about new things: a fantastic characteristic that I have seen in many successful people. Equities, mutual funds, etf, FnO, the list goes on.

4. Be willing to experiment in a small way: A small experiment in investing, business, etc. can sometimes lead to a big windfall. So if you can invest, say Rs. 20L in a new business (assuming net worth Rs. 5 crores), it is surely worth the effort. Learning would be useful.

5. Save and Invest like a religion.

6. Satisfaction: I do lectures saying ‘Santhushthi hi Sampathi hai’ – satisfaction is the ONLY wealth.

7. Gratitude towards the world in general, and God in particular. Count your blessings.

8. Remember we get what we deserve, only problem is we think we deserve more.

9. Patience: remember ‘n’ is in the NUMERATOR in the compounding formula, ‘r’ is only in the body. Great wealth like Buffets have been built over 75 years. True for most wealth in the world. Overnight you can get RICH, but wealth creation is far, far more difficult.