Oct 7, 2025
Some people claim that the wealthy must be intelligent—but is that really the case?
I don’t think so, because there are plenty of wealthy individuals who aren’t smart. Let me share an example. Wang Sicong is rich not because he’s clever, but because he’s Wang Jianlin’s son. I’m not saying he lacks intelligence; rather, whether he’s clever or not has no bearing on his wealth.
This shows that being rich doesn’t necessarily mean being intelligent.
You might argue that Wang Sicong’s money isn’t self-made, and that people who earn their wealth on their own must be clever. But that’s not necessarily true either. Take lottery winners, for example—they don’t get rich because they’re smart; they just happen to buy the winning ticket.
You might then say: "People who make money without luck—like successful entrepreneurs—must be clever." But that still isn’t necessarily true.
Some entrepreneurs don’t succeed because they’re smart themselves. Instead, they might just follow step-by-step guidance from someone more intelligent, and get lucky enough to make it work. Even without that help, an entrepreneur could still succeed by accidentally making the right choices at every turn. The chance of this happening to one person is low, but with billions of people in the world, the odds of someone hitting that "right streak" aren’t small—just like how there’s always someone winning the lottery.
So we can clearly see: rich people aren’t necessarily clever—they might just be lucky enough.
And it’s important to note that "luck" here refers to doing the right thing, or having the right things happen to them, at the right place and time. By that logic, clever people aren’t necessarily rich, either.
So, how do you get rich? Is it really just about trying hard to do the right things, in the right place, at the right time?
No. People who only chase that are called opportunists. That doesn’t mean they can’t succeed—what it means is, even if they do end up successful, they don’t understand why they succeeded.
The only way to know for certain how to succeed is to understand all the universe’s laws and its initial state—but that’s impossible for anyone.
So, if you don’t want to be an opportunist, only one path remains: work hard to find a pattern that will lead to success when followed within a specific time and place.
But how do you find such patterns? No one has a sure answer. You’ll only know if what you’re doing is right after you’ve already succeeded.
So the approach boils down to this: work hard, keep trying, and record everything you do. The more times you succeed by following a specific pattern, the more confident you can be that you’ve found a useful one for achieving success.