How do billionaires buy things? by Kyle Phoenix

It depends on what you’re trying to buy.

Most people misunderstand being a billionaire. At some point you were worth a few million and that’s when most of your systems got set up. You still get a shuffling off of a few million from being on boards, being an employee of your own company so you may still handle the same $10 million in liquid cash for 50 years, it’s just replenished yearly from a single or multiple sources.

Being a billionaire means that you have to manage the other billion dollars beyond that $10 million.

So you have an accountant, generally a personal one who is paid about $100,000 a year because they keep track of your personal bills and get them paid.

You have one or a handful of personal assistants that handle different areas—-one is for scheduling your personal calendar of events, one is for professional events, a third for business events, a fourth for international events and a fifth for family issues and personal friends——they would all pool into the same office, Outlook account or there’s a Lead Assistant who manages them all.

Then you have a management team—-Business Manager, Real Estate Manager, Personal Banking Manager—-the three of them handle their designated issues. There might be a President of your company who reports to you. There’s often a Logistics Manager, especially if you travel a lot. This position can be combined into your Lead Assistant or sometimes it’s a separate personal who also manages your Security and Travel team (think: Oprah), you would need someone who just handles travel, contacting airports, managing the plane, it’s staff and security. If you have multiple businesses, that’s multiple Presidents so there might be one overall Portfolio Business Manager who sums it all up monthly and there’s a full meeting every six months.

Then there’s Estate Manager, perhaps a House Manager/Head Butler/Head Maid.

So your purchases are handled by size, complexity, time and to which account it belongs.

Oprah has nothing in her name. She has companies that she owns that buy her everything as an employee. Why film TV shows at her house—-because a company bought the estate. The estate itself becomes a business write off. All associated costs to her well being are built into a contract with the company she owns—-clothing, food, travel expenses, so  she says:

I love that sweater, I want 5!

Lead Asst. has for simplicity’s sake 5 credit cards or Oprah has them which they assign to Clothing Budget.

I love that car!

Another card with a higher limit.

I love that house!

A money market account owned by a holding company.

I love that yacht!

Another assignation to a different holding company account.

At a certain limit she probably has to get the bigger accounts involved. So maybe she might have a Black American Express card—-from her company with no limit—-but she wouldn’t go over a million with it. Or she might prefer a checkbook (my mother had various checkbooks—-normal checking checking account, money market and checks that specifically went against annuities).

But everyone and everything is on a budget by a certain point—-maybe a few years into gaining money so you have an account with Westside Market, a supermarket here in Manhattan so they’ll send a monthly bill to the Personal Accountant. You have accounts at Saks, Nordstroms, Bergdorf Goodman’s, Tiffany’s, Armani, etc. places you’ve gone to regularly. Your Security detail or Personal Asst. who is with you also has a card with the Personal Account’s name and contact information if you’re famous——because handling money or demanding it is gauche.

Or you have this single Black Amex and your account at the end of the month figures out what was what.

Generally you only have the 1 card because of simplicity sake, it sticks right with your cell phone and you’re good. This above is what it looks like when it arrives—-at your office——literally a black hard on in a financial box! Because it’s one of the few simple objects that has a truly unlimited spending limit (okay, they make a courtesy call at any charge between $1–2 million….but still. There’s also the JP Morgan card which you need to have a depository account at $10 million to get but the Black Amex is flashier—-though the Centurion is actually metal so it’s heavy and makes a loud sound when tapped on a counter top.)

For anything over say a million, Security has those cards so you pick out some furniture at a high end store and give them the business card to contact your Business Manager or Accountant and they generally have a bank check delivered by hand when the invoice is confirmed within 24 hours because delivery instructions also have to be confirmed. So the Personal Assistant might handle the logistics of getting money, store and delivery together. (I’ve even done this when I worked as a personal assistant.)

Though it might seem cumbersome to have a second person involved besides the store/retailer in your transactions, it’s a security protocol so that it is confirmed that you made the purchase and the retailer exists. You might also want some distance—-”Judy, go back to Tiffany’s and get me the purple thongs in a size XL.” You might not want to walk in and pick those up. It’s better to have Judy go in and swipe with the corporate card.

Do you have cash on hand?

Yes, generally in the home safe because in case of an emergency—-there are suddenly fires in Montecito and you have to get your valuables out of the house. There’s a truck rental company but they’re pushing another house to the side to come to yours because you’re like I’ve got $75,000 cash if you’re here in an hour. Or you go to restaurants regularly and it’s easier to tip twice—-once on your card and once in cash because you know that the credit card tip goes to the house but you want your favorite waiters to get something in hand. (I used to do this at a restaurant that two coworkers and I would go to. We’d tip on the credit card—-that’s split through the bar, maybe the host, the chef, the manager—-lots of people helped. But then we’d slip Brian our waiter, he was an actor a $50 in cash, mainly because he’d doctored the bill after the 4th round of drinks.)

You might also have cash on hand for bonuses, gifts, emergencies, going out without wanting to leave a complete trace, or to places like nightclubs or food trucks or just places where cash might be needed and you don’t want to flash a multi-million dollar unlimited Black American Express card.

Those first couple of years are all about getting your team and systems in order so that you might replace team members but your system holds for yourself, your family, your business. I had to keep track of, distribute and adjust 300–400 paychecks for a company in a 40 block radius with 1000 employees who had all kinds of varying salaries—-hourly, yearly, yearly and hourly, part time, full time, withholding and then children-students started getting stipend checks—-I was literally the mayor of Harlem for two years—-but I was the Lead Liaison for the first 2 years while we were working the kinks out of employee, buying, vendors, supplies—-by now I’m sure it’s tight as a drum. Your lead assistant would handle making sure all of your private staff got paid, vacation days, scheduled, etc..

This is one of the reasons why unless you know what you’re looking for you can’t see this seamless team in place because when I was a corporate assistant or business liaison (the difference between as a liaison I was the crux point between two separate large businesses, one spawning the other), I designed a system that worked to the companies/individuals desired level of invisibility. Pretty much at a budget over $1 million for a business or person a year . By the time a business or person’s net worth would graduate to $100 million or to $1 billion it would just be increasing in size in some places and lack of redundancy in others.

Also people don’t realize that when you buy well, it tends to be of better quality so you’re not running out of things and your team replaces quite a few things before you even notice an issues—-sheets might be bought in quantity of three or ten sets and used through a large home for a year or two. My mother had linen for individual bedrooms which were carpeted and wall papered grey, green and a fuchsia pink so replenished based on guests for the year.

Wealth involves lots of anticipatory logistical work on your staff;’s part but after a few years you’re predictable in the sense that it’s like the path is cleaned, cleared and scented fifty feet in front of you because your team knows your preferences backwards and forwards.

As weird as it sounds, the person themselves might confuse or mess things up more than their team will because your team is so practiced at solving your problems. The team is generally thrown off when you do something weird or unusual or spontaneous. Ironically the more money you have the more you can be surrounded by controlling people (think: Michael Jackson) who have the maintenance of the system at heart and not the wishes of the individual that the system surrounds.

Of course this is a wide system, some people have or need less depending upon their desires but it falls into the concept of a “Family Office” that acts as a hub of management or a business/office where the team is centralized at domestically for residences and international travel/living.

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In what sense do you think that the mind of poor people differ from the mind of rich people, and why is that? by Kyle Phoenix

 

For years I’ve worked with teens and adults and gotten a deeper insight into social class, poverty and poor vs. successful/working (rich) thinking. I try to answer these questions with new observations or insights.

Recently an insubordinate employee got fired.

He initially presented well………ok, I thought a grown man carrying a Louis Vuitton bag was suspicious but I just watched. I normally didn’t have much contact with him so it was mainly through others I got a picture of him. He made it a point to access lots of buildings on campus, to use his position to access way too much. This lead to a video of him going into offices. For candy. It was silly and he got a talking to and sent home for the day. He was security after all.

Then word got around the office that he was “pushy”, demanding, commanding, directing—-from the lowest rung on the totem pole. Educated, experienced, older people were not amused.

He made a pushy move on my department and I was like—-No. He was pissed at the No. And in talking to him, he was younger, I tried to explain why I was saying No and also suggest that he think about his motivations. His way wasn’t working, he was garnering a reputation, a bad one amongst people who are clannish about their departments and such.

He would speak over me to the pint, where I directly asked him: May I speak now?

Oddly, I remember looking at his mouth because he couldn’t stop talking as I was talking calmly to him. It was like talking was set to Reply in him but not absorb and consider.

Finally, I suggested to him that others had run through the company with much the same attitude, the ones who’d been fired. But I encouraged him not to listen to my suggestion of change, to continue his methodology because I enjoyed being proven right after I told someone/observed someone doing something incorrectly. It’s a predictive analysis game I play with myself, less about ego and more about seeing, observing actions and such cleanly, closely, dispassionately.

That was a Monday. He gets into a huge fight with another Supervisor on Saturday. I and yet a third Supervisor have to get involved to separate them and send the guy home, again for public, rank, horrid insubordination.

He’s fired that Monday.

6 Days!—-the scoring of my predictive analysis.

He, however, lives in the Bronx, his wife is unemployed, they’re half on Welfare and though he got another job soon afterward, they are constantly experiencing one of the tsunamis of poverty—-chronic, intermittent employment and firing. A longer, probing discussion with him would surely illicit that some of his egotistical pushings was from trying to get ahead and never feeling like he/they do. He’s running in place though he might have just enough extra smarts to see/know it doesn’t have to be that way. He hasn’t learned the behavioral amendments and adjustments that those of us in Middle Class or Higher have mastered.

What Are COGNITIVE STRATEGIES?

Three categories:

1.     INPUT-Quantity and quality of data gathered (PreK to 6th Grade)

·        Use planning behaviors.

·        Focus perception on a specific stimuli.

·        Control impulsivity.

·        Explore data systematically.

·        Use appropriate and accurate labels.

·        Organize space using stable systems of reference.

·        Orient data in time.

·        Identify constancies across variations.

·        Gather precise and accurate data.

·        Consider two sources of information at once.

·        Organize data (parts of a whole.)

·        Visually transport data.

2. ELABORATION-Efficient use of the data (5th Grade to 9th Grade)

·        Identify and define the problem.

·        Select relevant cues.

·        Compare data.

·        Select appropriate categories of time. .

·        Summarize data.

·        Project relationship of data.

·        Use logical data.

·        Test hypothesis.

·        Build inferences.

·        Make a plan using the data.

·        Use appropriate labels.

·        Use data systematically.

3. OUTPUT-Communication of Elaboration and Input (&th Grade Through 12 grade/college)

·        Communicate clearly the labels and processes.

·        Visually transport data correctly.

·        Use precise and accurate language.

·        Control impulsive behavior.

The Cognitive Strategies of The Poor

Folk are like what happened? And I thought about him—-what I noticed, which is why I went beyond just a supervisory-level No to his demand/request was that he exampled higher cognitive capabilities than his station in work/life. We’re all intelligent—-possessing consciousness. But some people are also smart. Smart being a measurement of cognitive speed, ability, capability, potentiality. That’s a lot of where I focus my work now in education and teaching: development, high performance. I make this point because of the emotional draining I felt in trying to help “poor people”.

One of the ways people in poverty operate in their community context—-is through relationships. Relationships are paramount in poverty because resources are scarce. One of the few ways to develop relationships is through sexual attractiveness, sexual prowess, ability to fight and —-extreme verbiage.

The smartest poor people I’ve met, literally won’t/can’t shut the fuck up. All you want to scream at them is to shut the fuck up.

Because relationships in poverty are built on communication but there isn’t a robust intellectual gymnasium of concepts, ideas, books, theories—-that Smart Ability has nowhere to develop but in the spaces of language, communication, to relationships

The poor and potentially smart become verbal delugers. Also because in poverty this tends to work.

Imagine a scene where our Smart Guy is in his poor neighborhood and trying to get something—-attention, affection, food, money—-and he has this underdeveloped but overly expansive verbiage ability that he can use to overwhelm the others around him with. Because they might not be as smart and therefore haven’t developed verbiage, they are overwhelmed and he wins whatever it is he’s trying to gain. This happens from childhood to adulthood. He then gets a job where he’s alongside but not within corporate (Middle Class, Upper, Rich, Wealthy) structures. As a human, he will use his Strengths, resources, potentiality but it’s not refined.

And it’s focused at people of higher capacity (smarts) so all that verbiage is understood but deflectable. In poverty, it might not be completely understood nor deflectable by the target.

What many (verbiage) smart poor people run into in the real (multi-classed) world is that their superpowers are annoying, useless or even detrimental because they aren’t refined (which is what education does—-it refines human beings, while also filling them with information and it also passively, teaches structure—-I’ll get to that in a minute....)

He couldn’t hear me because he couldn’t shut off his superpower because he’d never worked with Professor X to become a refined X-Man. What I was thinking of him, he’d mentioned reading books, was to gently inquire about his educational interests and perhaps steer him successfully (as I have several other security guards) towards college.

But he wouldn’t shut the fuck up.

In not shutting up he pushed away absorbing anything of relevance to his environment. He was operating solely on his impressions, motivations and when someone (me) suggested he was driving towards a cliff edge—-he dismissed me and…went over the cliff’s edge.

Listening I would offer you, is a form of structure. You have to segment yourself, your thoughts from verbalization—-set them aside and then ingest, consider the new, perhaps contrary information coming in. I think the fact that it’s contrary is where poverty thinking rebels. If we seek like and patterns and such then if you’re not taught that reality also contains differences, changes, and challenges, you will only internalize like/agreement.

Amazingly enough a few weeks later a maintenance lady came into the cafeteria and asked me what had happened to him, she’d heard he’d been fired. She then relayed that he had approached her a few weeks into working, trying to get work info to help his wife get employed. She explained what she was trying to explain to him about the hiring process—-and then she pointed out how he wouldn’t listen to her, she explained how she’d tried several times, and ways, but he rebuffed hearing what she was trying to explain. It didn’t surprise me that she so clearly defined what I’d seen because of her education level but because of it so paralleling what I thought and felt in communicating with him. She’d distinctly experienced it to and could articulate it.

Which spiraled me into thinking and asking how she was seeing this/experiencing this from him. Now curiously she presented that it was because he was Dominican. (She’s Panamanian.) That sort of sullied her mental waters to my analysis because of bias/soft racism but I allowed that perhaps there is a cultural propensity that age and cultural perspective has allowed her to see that I have not.

Like I said before I’ve moved in my Generalist work in Education to more Specialist in how to identify and develop Gifted Students, I’m no longer interested, as I joke, in being the $35k a year social worker who dies in the church basement teaching people how to write their names. I see not only the need but am now working on the means/developmental materials to accelerate adults who have Cognitive Deficiencies, some created by poverty.

Where does the Guard who was fired fall/fail?

Here’s where I heard his lack.

INPUT-Quantity and quality of data gathered

·        Use planning behaviors.

·        Focus perception on specific stimulus.

ELABORATION-Efficient use of the data

·        Compare data.

·        Summarize data.

·        Project relationship of data.

·        Use logical data.

·        Test hypothesis.

·        Build inferences.

·        Make a plan using the data.

OUTPUT-Communication of Elaboration and Input

·        Control impulsive behavior.

I would surmise that he missed out on Focusing perception on specific stimuli in PreK to 5th Grade. When I teach this to students to either do evaluations or to evaluate themselves and see what we’re trying to fill in—-I explain each Strategy/Functionality as a Bucket.

The guard’s Bucket of Focus perception on specific stimulus was not properly “filled” therefore the next levels of supportive reactive buckets have not been properly “filled”.

That’s what the mentality/mindset difference is between the Poor and the Rich. The Rich get all of their Cognitive buckets well filled and even work on further developing them. Poverty then intellectually is a result of deprivation and teaching of these Strategies. There’s, of course, systemic and resource-based reasons for poverty, at least 12 dimensions, 11 besides money.

Does My Work Work?

As an aside to how do results shake out when someone like me has classes, students and can infuse to specific buckets or fix them? The national statistic of Poverty to Middle class or higher movement is 18% of poor people will shift in their lifetimes. In my classes and work, I would say I’m batting a strong 80% shift. But one, it’s a voluntary class system that people come into where I’ve been—-so those are the people who want change—-and two, I’m able to distinctly and deliberately identify where what and how to change them.

Sometimes my students call me Professor X so I’ve run with the analogy with them but it’s not far off—-it is like trying to reform someone or refine them because you can see their raw potential has greater possibilities. The challenge to 100% success is the person and their surrounding reality may not see that possibility as possible or desirable.

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Mark Howe Comment

 

 · 3y

Some people don't seem to have any listening skills. I’ve a friend who tends to yammer at people 24/7. Recently she's started adult education and now that she's seen a glimpse of all the stuff she's been missing she's gone into overdrive and lectures people about the stuff she's learned even though we knew it 20 years ago. I’m proud of her but it's painful at times and I can't decide whether the her ‘preaching to the choir’ lectures are worse than the non-sensical yammering . . .:)

 

How do billionaires buy things? by Kyle Phoenix

It depends on what you’re trying to buy.

Most people misunderstand being a billionaire. At some point you were worth a few million and that’s when most of your systems got set up. You still get a shuffling off of a few million from being on boards, being an employee of your own company so you may still handle the same $10 million in liquid cash for 50 years, it’s just replenished yearly from a single or multiple sources.

Being a billionaire means that you have to manage the other billion dollars beyond that $10 million.

So you have an accountant, generally a personal one who is paid about $100,000 a year because they keep track of your personal bills and get them paid.

You have one or a handful of personal assistants that handle different areas—-one is for scheduling your personal calendar of events, one is for professional events, a third for business events, a fourth for international events and a fifth for family issues and personal friends——they would all pool into the same office, Outlook account or there’s a Lead Assistant who manages them all.

Then you have a management team—-Business Manager, Real Estate Manager, Personal Banking Manager—-the three of them handle their designated issues. There might be a President of your company who reports to you. There’s often a Logistics Manager, especially if you travel a lot. This position can be combined into your Lead Assistant or sometimes it’s a separate personal who also manages your Security and Travel team (think: Oprah), you would need someone who just handles travel, contacting airports, managing the plane, it’s staff and security. If you have multiple businesses, that’s multiple Presidents so there might be one overall Portfolio Business Manager who sums it all up monthly and there’s a full meeting every six months.

Then there’s Estate Manager, perhaps a House Manager/Head Butler/Head Maid.

So your purchases are handled by size, complexity, time and to which account it belongs.

Oprah has nothing in her name. She has companies that she owns that buy her everything as an employee. Why film TV shows at her house—-because a company bought the estate. The estate itself becomes a business write off. All associated costs to her well being are built into a contract with the company she owns—-clothing, food, travel expenses, so  she says:

I love that sweater, I want 5!

Lead Asst. has for simplicity’s sake 5 credit cards or Oprah has them which they assign to Clothing Budget.

I love that car!

Another card with a higher limit.

I love that house!

A money market account owned by a holding company.

I love that yacht!

Another assignation to a different holding company account.

At a certain limit she probably has to get the bigger accounts involved. So maybe she might have a Black American Express card—-from her company with no limit—-but she wouldn’t go over a million with it. Or she might prefer a checkbook (my mother had various checkbooks—-normal checking checking account, money market and checks that specifically went against annuities).

But everyone and everything is on a budget by a certain point—-maybe a few years into gaining money so you have an account with Westside Market, a supermarket here in Manhattan so they’ll send a monthly bill to the Personal Accountant. You have accounts at Saks, Nordstroms, Bergdorf Goodman’s, Tiffany’s, Armani, etc. places you’ve gone to regularly. Your Security detail or Personal Asst. who is with you also has a card with the Personal Account’s name and contact information if you’re famous——because handling money or demanding it is gauche.

Or you have this single Black Amex and your account at the end of the month figures out what was what.

Generally you only have the 1 card because of simplicity sake, it sticks right with your cell phone and you’re good. This above is what it looks like when it arrives—-at your office——literally a black hard on in a financial box! Because it’s one of the few simple objects that has a truly unlimited spending limit (okay, they make a courtesy call at any charge between $1–2 million….but still. There’s also the JP Morgan card which you need to have a depository account at $10 million to get but the Black Amex is flashier—-though the Centurion is actually metal so it’s heavy and makes a loud sound when tapped on a counter top.)

For anything over say a million, Security has those cards so you pick out some furniture at a high end store and give them the business card to contact your Business Manager or Accountant and they generally have a bank check delivered by hand when the invoice is confirmed within 24 hours because delivery instructions also have to be confirmed. So the Personal Assistant might handle the logistics of getting money, store and delivery together. (I’ve even done this when I worked as a personal assistant.)

Though it might seem cumbersome to have a second person involved besides the store/retailer in your transactions, it’s a security protocol so that it is confirmed that you made the purchase and the retailer exists. You might also want some distance—-”Judy, go back to Tiffany’s and get me the purple thongs in a size XL.” You might not want to walk in and pick those up. It’s better to have Judy go in and swipe with the corporate card.

Do you have cash on hand?

Yes, generally in the home safe because in case of an emergency—-there are suddenly fires in Montecito and you have to get your valuables out of the house. There’s a truck rental company but they’re pushing another house to the side to come to yours because you’re like I’ve got $75,000 cash if you’re here in an hour. Or you go to restaurants regularly and it’s easier to tip twice—-once on your card and once in cash because you know that the credit card tip goes to the house but you want your favorite waiters to get something in hand. (I used to do this at a restaurant that two coworkers and I would go to. We’d tip on the credit card—-that’s split through the bar, maybe the host, the chef, the manager—-lots of people helped. But then we’d slip Brian our waiter, he was an actor a $50 in cash, mainly because he’d doctored the bill after the 4th round of drinks.)

You might also have cash on hand for bonuses, gifts, emergencies, going out without wanting to leave a complete trace, or to places like nightclubs or food trucks or just places where cash might be needed and you don’t want to flash a multi-million dollar unlimited Black American Express card.

Those first couple of years are all about getting your team and systems in order so that you might replace team members but your system holds for yourself, your family, your business. I had to keep track of, distribute and adjust 300–400 paychecks for a company in a 40 block radius with 1000 employees who had all kinds of varying salaries—-hourly, yearly, yearly and hourly, part time, full time, withholding and then children-students started getting stipend checks—-I was literally the mayor of Harlem for two years—-but I was the Lead Liaison for the first 2 years while we were working the kinks out of employee, buying, vendors, supplies—-by now I’m sure it’s tight as a drum. Your lead assistant would handle making sure all of your private staff got paid, vacation days, scheduled, etc..

This is one of the reasons why unless you know what you’re looking for you can’t see this seamless team in place because when I was a corporate assistant or business liaison (the difference between as a liaison I was the crux point between two separate large businesses, one spawning the other), I designed a system that worked to the companies/individuals desired level of invisibility. Pretty much at a budget over $1 million for a business or person a year . By the time a business or person’s net worth would graduate to $100 million or to $1 billion it would just be increasing in size in some places and lack of redundancy in others.

Also people don’t realize that when you buy well, it tends to be of better quality so you’re not running out of things and your team replaces quite a few things before you even notice an issues—-sheets might be bought in quantity of three or ten sets and used through a large home for a year or two. My mother had linen for individual bedrooms which were carpeted and wall papered grey, green and a fuchsia pink so replenished based on guests for the year.

Wealth involves lots of anticipatory logistical work on your staff;’s part but after a few years you’re predictable in the sense that it’s like the path is cleaned, cleared and scented fifty feet in front of you because your team knows your preferences backwards and forwards.

As weird as it sounds, the person themselves might confuse or mess things up more than their team will because your team is so practiced at solving your problems. The team is generally thrown off when you do something weird or unusual or spontaneous. Ironically the more money you have the more you can be surrounded by controlling people (think: Michael Jackson) who have the maintenance of the system at heart and not the wishes of the individual that the system surrounds.

Of course this is a wide system, some people have or need less depending upon their desires but it falls into the concept of a “Family Office” that acts as a hub of management or a business/office where the team is centralized at domestically for residences and international travel/living.

#KylePhoenix

#TheKylePhoenixShow